We Need More Than A Fresh Start • November 23, 2025 • Matthew Spradlin • Genesis 9-18–29

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.

We're so glad you're here,

and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith,

and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible

and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.

So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bibles,

open them to Genesis chapter nine.

We've been in a series of messages

through the book of Genesis,

describing to us how everything began.

And so far in the book of Genesis,

we've seen that God creates everything very good.

There's perfect love and harmony and fellowship

between us and God, one another and creation.

But then we see that mankind rebels against our Creator,

and it plunges us into sin and death.

In fact, ever since sin came into the world,

death has been our constant companion.

In fact, mankind becomes so evil and so sinful

that God sends a great flood of judgment.

Now, you think about the story of Noah

and the story of the flood,

and what we see is that Noah's life is about two things.

It's about building an ark and building an altar.

And our church really is about those two things.

It's about salvation and it's about worship.

We are wanting to be a place where people can come

and experience salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, the ark was temporary, but Jesus is eternal.

He's the Savior and the only way that we come to God.

We also want to be a place where we worship, where we worship the Lord,

and you can come with those who love God and love you,

and we can worship the Lord together in spirit and in truth.

Now, when we think about the great flood, it kind of seems cute when we look at it in a picture book, doesn't it?

I mean, you get this big boat and you got all these cute animals entering the ark and so forth.

But the reality is much more destructive than that.

It is the most deadly and destructive event in all of human history.

Millions of people lose their life in the judgment of God.

Now you say, well, you know, I'm really bothered

that God had to judge man.

Well, so was God.

If you read the story, you see that God was grieved

in his heart over the sinfulness

and the rebellion of mankind.

Did you know that God grieves over every sin?

The Bible says do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,

but instead surrender to the Lord.

God grieves over every sin

and God judges every sin as well.

Now many modern people have a problem

with a God who judges sin.

But if you don't believe that God judges sin,

you actually have more problems, not less problems.

If God does not judge sin, then you have to believe that you live in an unjust world forever,

which may be okay for you because you live in the suburbs and your life is all good and

no one's ever committed great, terrible evil against you.

There's not been any travesty of injustice within your life, but when you read history,

and you look at many parts of the world,

you realize I need a just God.

I need a good God who judges sin, and I want to live in a just world forever.

Now, maybe an extreme example of this is the Sandy Hook shooting that happened many years

ago.

It was a terrible and tragic event.

A guy kills 20 kids and six staff members, and then he kills himself.

Now let me ask you, how could justice ever be served in that situation?

You say, well, he killed himself.

Well, what if they got him?

What could you possibly do...

that would make up for the murdering

of 20 elementary students.

You can.

You could give them the death penalty,

you could give them life in prison,

but none of that would make up

for the evil that he committed.

And by the way, if there's no resurrection from the dead,

what about all those kids?

What about justice for them?

You see, it's silly.

The idea that God doesn't judge sin is silly.

It is a lack of thinking about life.

It is a lack of thinking about the implications for life.

Of course God judges sin,

and it's actually a great comfort to us.

to know that God is a good God

and that God ultimately will bring us

into a just world forever.

Now, I think one of our problems

with the judgment of sin

is that we ourselves are sinful.

And have you ever noticed

that we want there to be justice in the world,

but we want us not to be judged?

God, would you judge all those other sinners and the sins that they're committing, but

God, would you not judge my sin?

Now, we innately understand justice.

When a great evil is committed, our hearts and our souls cry out that justice would be

served.

And so justice is not surprising.

It's what we would expect.

What is surprising?

is grace. God's amazing grace. It's a surprise, and it's amazing to all of us. The Bible says,

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Maybe a better way to say it is that God's

grace found Noah. And aren't you glad that God's grace found you in your sin?

that God reached down from heaven

and pulled you out of the muck of your sin

and through the Lord Jesus Christ,

God forgave your sin, restored you to a relationship

with him and gave you a new purpose

and a new destiny with him.

Now we're gonna read the end of the story

of the great flood and Noah's life

beginning in verse number 18.

It says, now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and

Ham was the father of Canaan.

These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.

And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard.

Then he drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent.

Now, one of the things that I love about the Bible is how honest the Bible is.

The Bible doesn't tell us what we wanna hear

or what we think should be.

The Bible tells us life as it really is.

This is no hagiography.

This is a brutal reality within Noah's life.

Now the end of Noah's story is kind of a strange ending

when you think about it.

Because this man who is a preacher of righteousness,

this man who walked with God,

The end of the story is him getting stone cold drunk

and being buck naked.

I mean, it's kind of an odd ending to the story,

wouldn't you say?

It's kind of the ancient equivalent of tequila

makes his clothes fall off, you know,

and he's uncovered in his tent.

Another way to say that, that it says a little bit later,

is he's naked.

Now, this is not the part of the story

that makes it into the Bible picture books.

or the nursery Noah's Ark wall mural, you know?

We kind of leave this part of the story out,

but it's an important part of the story.

It's not here to embarrass Noah.

It's here to teach us something about the nature of God

and our own nature and how it is

that we are to relate to God,

and that is that we all need God's grace.

You see, past success is not a guarantee of future success.

And so we all need God's grace within our life.

You see, the problem is that what went into the ark and what came out of the ark was Noah and his family, the animals, and sin.

Because Noah was still a sinner.

Sinner.

And fairly quickly we see that sin begins to destroy Noah and his family.

Now the point is not that just all can fall into sin.

I think the point is that all do fall into sin.

The Bible is full of sinners sinning, believers falling, and God's grace being more abundant than all our sin.

Aren't you glad that God's grace is greater than your sin?

Amen.

Aren't you glad that God's grace and God's love is stronger than your sin?

Now, all of us are going to fall in life.

And so one of the keys is that we fall quickly and we repent quickly.

Because the longer we take to repent, the further we seem to fall.

And so we need to learn to wake up, to start thinking, and get back to God as soon as we can.

Now, sometimes we think of the story of Noah

as Noah is this really good guy

and everyone else is a sinner,

but then there's Noah and he doesn't sin.

Guess what?

That's not the story at all.

The story is that God is gracious to Noah

in spite of who he is and in spite of his sin.

You see, grace is for the undeserved.

We don't perform for God's approval.

We can't merit it, we can't do anything for it.

It is God's grace as we put our trust in Jesus

and what he did on the cross for us.

The Bible says God gives us forgiveness

and imputes the righteousness of Jesus to our account.

It's not deserved, but I sure am thankful for it.

I am sure I'm glad that God is a God not only of justice,

but of grace.

And so get out of your mind that Noah is this perfect guy.

He's not.

And get out of your mind that you and I are either, right?

We all like Noah need the grace of God.

And all of us are standing here and not in hell right now

because God's grace towards us.

Now how is it that God could be gracious to Noah and how is it that God can be gracious

to us?

If God's a good God that always judges sin and ultimately will bring about a just world,

then how is it that God can be gracious?

Well it's because God's judgment fell on Jesus Christ instead of Noah and instead of us.

You see, the Bible teaches that God's judgment ultimately falls in two places,

in hell and at the cross.

God poured out his judgment for our sin upon Christ.

He who knew no sin became sin for us

that we might experience and become the righteousness of God.

And so because the judgment of Noah's sin fell on Jesus Christ,

Noah could experience grace.

You see, the cross is where the justice of God

and the grace of God all converge because of the love of God.

And so you too...

if you will trust in Christ,

can experience God's unmerited favor.

You too, the Bible says,

"'It's not by works lest we boast,

"'it is by grace through faith that we are saved.'"

And so when we put our faith in Christ,

God gives us grace.

Let's read the rest of the story,

beginning in verse number 22.

It says, and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers

outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and

covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their

father's nakedness.

Now, what exactly is Ham's sin?

Now, there's been all kinds of speculation of,

was there more going on here than that we're told?

What exactly is happening here?

And the reality is, I don't want to speculate about what we do know.

I want to point out what we do know.

God doesn't tell us everything we want to know,

but he does tell us what we need to know.

Now, I personally think that what happens is exactly what he says, that something was

going on in Ham's heart and his actions betrayed his heart.

We don't know, but here's what we know.

Ham delighted in his father's disgrace, and Shem and Japheth treated their father with

dignity and grace.

Do you know that's what love does?

Love treats sinners with dignity and grace

rather than delighting in someone else's disgrace.

Now Ham sees his father's sin

and he goes out and he talks to his brothers about it.

Instead of covering it, he spreads it.

And by the way, did you know that that is what gossip is?

Gossip is taking pleasure in someone else's shame and sin.

And so let me ask you, what kind of person do you want to be?

Do you want to be the kind of person who delights in other people's shame and disgrace and sin?

Or do you want to be the kind of person who delights in grace?

You see, you can either delight in disgrace or you can delight in grace,

but you can't do both.

Now the two older brothers, they knew that their dad was a sinner, but they

were trying to honor their father, even in the midst of his sin.

And so the question becomes, how do you honor someone when they have sinned?

Well, you recognize the sin, but you extend grace and you continue to

treat them with worth and value.

Let me ask you, when someone else's sin sins,

do you cover it or do you spread it?

Do you delight in their disgrace

or through gossip or through ridicule

or do you delight in extending grace?

The Bible says we who have become recipients

of God's grace are called upon

to extend grace to one another.

Now, we have to be very careful not to define people

by their vices and by their sin.

Instead, we need to define people by God's love

and by God's grace.

And by the way, that includes ourselves.

Do you define yourself by your vices,

your struggles, and by your sin?

And by the way,

Satan wants to define all of us by our sin, doesn't he?

He's got all kinds of words.

You are an alcoholic, you are an adulterer,

and all these kinds of words that he wants us

to define people by, and he wants us to define ourselves by

rather than defining ourselves by the love

and the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

You see, God's infinite love and grace

gives us infinite worth.

And so we need to treat one another

with the love and the grace that God has treated us with.

Now, I think there's another principle here

in these verses, and that is,

you often find what you're looking for, don't you?

If you tend to see what is wrong with you,

other people and situations and relationships, then that's what you're going to find.

In fact, it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy because if you're looking for

what is wrong with your spouse, guess what, you're going to find it.

If you're looking with what's wrong with your parents, you're going to find it.

If you're looking for what's wrong with other people within the

church, you're going to find it.

You know why?

Because the common denominator between all those people is that we're all sinners.

And so if you're looking for sin, there's plenty of places to find it.

I want to challenge you that instead of looking to other people's sin,

that you look to God's grace in other people,

because when you look to God's grace, you'll find that as well.

God is always at work within our lives, right?

And whether it's common grace or it's particular grace, anything good within our life comes

as a gift from God.

And so what kind of person do you want to be?

Do you want to be the person who's always looking for sin or do you want to be the person

who's always looking for God?

The person who's always looking for fault or the person who's always looking for grace?

I want to challenge you to make God's glory, God's grace, and God's love the most prominent

thing in your mind and your heart when it comes to your life and your relationship with

other people.

Look what it says in verse number 24.

It says, so Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him.

And then he said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, he shall be to his brethren.

And he said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant.

May God enlarge Japheth and may dwell in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his servant.

Now, the obvious question

in this passage is that Ham is the one who sinned.

Why is the curse directed towards his son, Canaan?

Now, perhaps Noah could see in Canaan

the same ungodly attitudes that existed in his father, Ham.

And so I think that the point is not that the Son is responsible for the sins of the Father.

That's not biblical.

The Bible is very clear that we are responsible for our own sin.

We're not responsible for other people's sin.

The point is that the Son often perpetuates the sins of the Father,

and we see that throughout the Bible.

You see, our sin is often perpetuated by our children.

Right?

Now children grow up in the world that their parents create.

And so let me ask you, mom and dad,

what world are you creating?

What world are you perpetuating?

Because whatever world you're creating is going to be a lot like the world that your

grandchildren grow up because that world will be perpetuated to the next generation.

You see, we often pass on the good and the bad of our character to our children and to

our grandchildren.

And so for parents, what that means is that we need to work on our weaknesses and grow

in Christlikeness.

We need to break the chain of sin

that's being passed from one generation to the next,

the habits and the patterns of sin.

Let's just say, Lord, give me the grace

for it to stop with me.

And help me to have a godly lineage

and to pass on a godly repentant attitude.

We need to learn to repent quick

and allow God to change us and to change our family tree.

Now that's for the parents.

For the children,

It means that we need to learn to emulate the good in our parents and not the bad.

And here's the reality.

You get to choose what to emulate in your parents' lives.

Noah's righteousness is reproduced in Shem and Japheth's life.

His unrighteousness is reproduced in Ham's life.

And the truth is that all of us have parents...

who are sinners.

And so don't emulate what they got wrong,

emulate what they got right.

Even if there's a whole lot of bad,

find the few things that they did right

and try to emulate that and to disregard all of the rest.

Now there's an important principle

that I think is important for personal spiritual growth

in our own life, and that is you are not the way you are because of your parents.

You are the way that you are because of what you choose to be, how you choose to think,

and what you choose to do.

So often, we want to blame other people for our choices, and all that does is perpetuate

our bad choices.

Right?

It's not until we take responsibility for our own choices

that we begin to grow spiritually within our life.

That's not to say our mom and dad didn't influence us.

It's not to say that they didn't affect us.

But here you have three kids,

two that chose one direction

and one that chose the other direction.

And you get to choose.

You get to be responsible.

You are responsible for your own choices

and not the choices of others.

Now you may live out the consequences of others,

but you're not responsible for the choices of others.

Now there's another principle I think that we find

in this passage and that is that often we assume

that God's posture towards us is neutral,

but actually God's posture towards us is blessing.

From the very beginning, God begins to bless us.

Now what does it mean to be blessed by God?

Now, God's blessing is multifaceted,

but I wanna give you one aspect.

God's blessing is God's enjoyment

and empowerment over your life.

God made us and he blessed us.

He gave us his enjoyment and he gave us his empowerment over our life.

And the key to being blessed is to know God.

Notice that Shem was blessed because he knew the Lord.

The greatest blessing of life is not what we get from God.

It's to get God.

The greatest blessing we have in life is to experience a relationship with God

through the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

Now, if you want to understand God,

you have to understand that God is highly relational,

deeply committed, and he always has a greater plan.

That is always true.

And so if you want to experience God's blessings,

It comes from being highly focused

on your relationship with God,

being deeply committed to following him,

and trusting in and connecting yourself

to God's greater plan for your life.

Another principle we see in this passage

is that you are blessed in order to be a blessing

to other people.

Shem is blessed so that he can be a blessing to others.

And so how do we bless other people?

Well, we bless other people by speaking God's word

and living out God's word very personally and practically

into other people's lives.

And as we see and say the grace of God within our life, it becomes a great blessing.

They experience God's enjoyment.

They experience God's empowerment as we point people to the Lord.

And so let me ask you, are you seeking to be a blessing to your family?

Are you seeking to be a blessing to your church?

and to the people that God has put within your life.

You say, well, how do I do that?

We bless by communicating God's enjoyment

and empowerment to others with our lips and with our life,

with our speech and with our service.

And as God works in you and through you,

it becomes a powerful conduit

of God's blessing to other people.

We want to be blessed by God.

But that blessing causes us to want to be a blessing to other people.

Now, this prophecy about Shem is ultimately fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Shem is blessed because through him will ultimately come the Lord Jesus Christ.

And through Jesus, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

You see, the greatest way to bless someone else is to point them to Christ.

to bring him to Christ.

He's the greatest blessing of life

because through him, we have a relationship with God.

Through him, we experience the glory

and the goodness and the grace of God.

Now, blessing is a major theme in the book of Genesis

and for the rest of the Bible.

God makes us in his image and he blesses us

He says, I want you, I bless you and I want you to be fruitful and I want you to multiply

and I want you to fill the earth.

I want you to represent me and I want you to reflect me and it gives us everything that

we need and we have this wonderful relationship with God.

God blesses us from the very beginning.

But then the temptation was to be blessed apart from God.

And every time we seek to be blessed apart from God,

it ends in disaster and it ends in death.

And ever since we tried to be blessed apart from God,

death and destruction has been our constant companion.

And so the rest of the Bible is God's plan

through the Lord Jesus Christ

to restore us back to the blessing of God.

to restore God's blessing within our life.

Notice what it says in verse 28 and 29.

It says, and Noah lived after the flood 350 years.

So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.

It's interesting

that God uses Noah to save humanity, at least temporarily,

and then the very same thing happens to Noah

that happened to everybody before the flood.

Noah ultimately dies.

Now Noah, in many ways, is like a second Adam.

There are many similarities between Adam, the first man, and Noah, kind of this new

representative of humanity that comes out of the ark.

Both had three sons, and one does something terrible.

Both started out with everything being very good, and by the end, they had sinned.

Both end up naked and ashamed, and both need to be covered by someone else.

Now there are many other similarities between Adam and Noah,

but I think the big idea of the passage

that I want you to go away understanding is this.

You and I need more than just a fresh start.

We need a savior.

We need more than a new beginning.

We need Jesus.

You see, Noah had everything that he needed to obey God,

and yet he still sinned.

And so we don't just need a fresh start,

we need forgiveness of sin.

We need a new heart.

And Jesus is the only one who can forgive our sin

and give us a new heart.

You see, we're always trying to change everything

on the outside, thinking that's gonna solve everything.

but it doesn't work. Why? Because we bring ourselves to whatever fresh start we have.

What we need is forgiveness, redemption, and transformation.

Now, in the Bible, there's going to be another flood of God's judgment that comes,

but it's going to come upon the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus is going to take God's judgment

for our sin.

You see, Noah was naked because of his sin.

Jesus was stripped naked because of our sin.

The flood did something external.

It gave a new fresh start, a new world.

but it didn't do anything internal.

Jesus does something external

in that he dies on the cross for us,

but it transforms us internally.

It changes us.

The ark was a temporary salvation,

but Jesus is an eternal salvation.

And so if you're here today,

you don't just need a fresh start.

You need a savior.

You need Jesus to forgive your sins,

to change your heart, to give you a new purpose,

and to give you a new destiny.

You see, Jesus is the only one

who can restore us back to relationship with God

so that we can experience the blessing of God

and the blessings of God forever and ever.

With a good God in a just world,

for all eternity.

Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer.

Here in a few moments,

we're gonna have a time of response.

We call it a time of invitation

because God is always inviting us to come to him.

Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone comes and opens the door,

I'll come into them and have fellowship with them,

have relationship with them.

And so I wanna invite you today to come and say,

I wanna trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I don't want just a fresh start.

I want forgiveness of sins.

I want redemption.

I want a new heart.

I wanna be clean before God.

I want the guilt and the burden of sin to be gone.

And I want a fresh start with a fresh heart and a new destiny.

Maybe you say, well, I've been living for myself.

Well, let me ask you, how's that going?

Even if this life, you're able to avoid many of the consequences of sin,

the Bible's very clear, in the next life you will not.

God will judge every sin either at the cross or in hell.

And so I want to encourage you to put your trust in Jesus.

See, God is inviting you into fellowship with him

so that you can have redemption,

so that you can have transformation.

And so here in just a moment, we're going to have counselors here at the front,

and you can come forward and say, I want to give my life to Christ,

and we'll talk to you about that.

They'll know just what to do.

Maybe you've given your life to Christ, but you've never followed him in believer's baptism,

and you'd like to come like some who are baptized today and say, I want to get baptized.

We'd love to set up a time for you to do that.

In fact, here in just a couple weeks, we're going to have our anniversary Sunday where we celebrate 40 years as a church.

That would be a great day for you to go public with your faith and declare your allegiance and your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Maybe the Lord's leading you to join this church.

You say, I want to be a part of a church that's about salvation and worship,

about leading people to Christ and helping people to follow him

and worship him within their life.

We'd love for you to come.

Maybe you've been coming for a while,

but the Holy Spirit's just nudging on your heart.

This is the time.

Let's make it official.

Let's come forward.

Let's be a part of the family.

Amen.

Did you know that God uses and gave us the church, that is the people of God, to be a blessing to us,

but also for us to be a conduit of his blessing to them?

And so we come to church and we're just trying to bless each other.

And really what we're doing is we're allowing God to be a blessing through us to others.

So maybe you want to come forward. Maybe you've...

giving your life to Christ. You've been baptized. You've been a member of this church,

but God's working your heart. He's moving your heart. Maybe there's some sin in your life,

and you're creating a world that you don't want to pass on to the next generation.

There's some habits and patterns in your life that you can't change, but only God can.

You can pray right where you are that God would help you to do that.

You've got to surrender that to the Lord.

You've got to repent.

Instead of you trying to be the master of your faith,

you've got to let God have control of your life and your heart.

Maybe there's some other area of your life that God is moving in.

You can come forward and pray and say,

God, help me to be a blessing.

Help me to experience your blessing.

Help me to walk with you and love you and trust you and follow you with my life.

You know, I don't want to get to the end of my life and wonder what God would have done if I had been all in for Jesus.

I want to be blessable so that I can be a conduit of blessing to other people.

You and I have no idea what God could do in our life

if we would fully surrender to following him,

to allow him to make us a blessing to other people.

And so maybe you wanna pray for that,

you wanna pray for someone else.

There's so many needs represented here today

in all of our lives.

This is a time where we seek God

and we let God have his will and his way within our life.

Our heavenly Father, thank you for this time.

God, I pray that you would use it greatly.

God, that we would not leave here the same as we came,

but God, we would see your glory and grace today

in a deeper and greater way.

God, that you would give us new hearts,

that you would create in us a clean heart

and a right spirit, Lord.

That you would do what we cannot do, and that is that you would give us a heart of flesh,

that you would give us a heart after your own heart.

So Lord, bless this invitation.

Draw everyone to the Lord Jesus Christ, because he alone is our salvation.

He alone is our Lord and our Savior.

Help us to follow him.

Help us to love him.

Help us to trust him and to honor you.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

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