Chuck Smith discusses 'The Curse on Canaan' as he explores the sinful nature of humanity, which persists even after the flood. He emphasizes that Noah's curse on Canaan was misinterpreted historically to justify slavery, which is a perversion of scripture. Smith clarifies that the descendants of Canaan were not destined for servitude but contributed significantly to civilization, particularly through the Phoenicians. He also highlights the genealogical significance of Noah's sons, particularly Shem, from whom Abraham and ultimately Jesus would descend. The sermon concludes with a reflection on the importance of understanding biblical history and its implications for faith today.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life And make you whole Welcome to The Word for Today Featuring the Bible teaching of Pastor Chuck Smith Of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California Pastor Chuck is currently leading us on a verse-by-verse study Through the entire Bible And on today's edition of The Word for Today We'll be looking at The Curse on Canaan As we pick up in Genesis, chapter 9, verse 24 So let's follow along as Pastor Chuck Smith Begins today's lesson The sin nature of man is manifested very early in life And it's always a very shocking and disappointing thing When we see the nature of sin manifested in our children You know, you think they're little angels And they with big innocent looking eyes can lie straight to you Now did you have to teach your children how to lie? No, you had to teach them to tell the truth That's something that has to be instilled into a child Has to be trained, has to be taught Now tell the truth, it's always better to tell the truth You should always tell the truth These are things we have to train the children Why? Because they don't come by the truth naturally But they find it very natural to lie So the sinful nature unfortunately survived the flood And though Noah, righteous in all of his generations Yet when he comes forth out of the ark, gets drunk Lies around naked The sinful nature is still there When he sobered up and realized what Ham had done 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 And may God enlarge Japheth that he may dwell in the tents of Shem And may Canaan be his servant Now as we will get into chapter 11 And we find the various nations that descended from the three sons of Noah We will find that this is more or less a prophecy of Noah But at the onset let me say That one of the worst perversions of scripture Is that fallacy That the curse upon Canaan was that he was to become black And thus the black people are a servant race That is not scriptural It is a fallacy, there is nothing to it It is a perversion that was developed by those men engaged in the slave trade In order to sort of assuage their own consciences Over the horribly vile thing that they were doing It is not scriptural The descendants of Canaan actually were the ancient Phoenicians Who were one of the strongest powerful people on the earth at one time The Phoenician navies It is also true that the Egyptians and those who are in Africa Were also the descendants of Ham But the fact that they should be You know the servant class is not scriptural It is not right The word here would imply that these would be the people Who would bring to man And it has proven to be true Many of the advances in the fields of technology They would be of service really to mankind is the idea And they have been of tremendous service to mankind But it surely does not mean that they are to be slaves of the two brothers Or to the descendants of the two brothers That is a terrible perversion of the scriptures We'll get to that further in chapter 11 Blessed be the Lord or Jehovah the God of Shem And so here we get the indication that Shem would be the descendant Of among others the Hebrew people And through Shem would come Abraham The line of which God would work In order to bring his son the Messiah into the world So Jehovah the God of Shem And may God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem And this indeed did come to pass as the borders of Japheth were enlarged And the descendants of Japheth actually have come to dwell In many places in the land or in the places of Shem In the tents of Shem Now Noah lived after the flood 350 years And so here we find a blank in history of 350 years Interesting isn't it? This is the end of Noah, it doesn't tell us anything else about Noah This is the last thing Is he was drunk and You know comes out of it and curses his grandson Because of what his dad did And that really ends for us the saga of this interesting man Noah He's now out of the way for 350 years But the fact that he lived 350 years means That he was still alive when Abraham was born And lived in a contemporary period of time with Abraham for 58 years So it is quite possible That being a direct descendant of Noah through Shem That Abraham talked to his Great, great, great, great how many generations back that would have been grandfather And could have heard the story of God's warning concerning the flood and all Directly from Noah himself With the longevity we Failed to see how that crosses several generations When you live to be 950 years old And according to the scriptures Noah was About the third as far as Longevity that is recorded in the word and the interesting thing Is that though there was probably tremendous climactic changes After the flood and the increased Cosmic radiation bombarding the earth Yet it did not have an immediate effect upon Noah And began to gradually subside the ages of the people There was a gradual decline in their lifespans It wasn't just dramatically cut off But there was a gradual decline of the lifespan Until you get to Abraham's generation and he lived to be an old man 165 years old but then it began And continued to decline from the time of Abraham Until you get to a rough average of about 70 Years old So he lived after the flood for 350 years and so The days of Noah were 950 years And he died and so a quiet time of 350 years now If you transport that to the present time Now as we get into chapter 10 this is commonly known as the table of nations And so as we come into chapter 10 We see how that the three sons of Noah Became the progenitors of The various nations of people This is the genealogy of the sons of Noah Shem Ham and Japheth This genealogy was probably Compiled by Shem In that he only follows the descendants Of his two brothers Until about the time of Babel When the nations were divided The languages dividing the nations And at that point he doesn't follow The descendants of his two brothers any further But does continue his own descendants But in giving us the descendants of his two brothers We get the ethnic origins of the various Races of people And beginning with his brothers he takes first of all His older brother The sons of Japheth Were Gomer Magog Medi Javan Tubal Meshach And Tyrus Gomer Was the progenitor of the Germanic people Magog the Scythians And the Russian origins Basically the sons of Japheth were the Progenitors of what are known as the Indo-European nations And so those nations of Europe Descended We would say pretty much the Europeans including The Russians Were the descendants Of Japheth Tubal Goes back to The Of course you know that in Russia there are many tribes Mediah is the Medes Tubal is probably the origin of the name of Toblenz The modern Russian city And Meshach Is the Muscovy or Moscow today And so These are the Descendants of Japheth And from Gomer The Ashkenaz The Ashkenaz are again the People of Germany and Those German Jews were called Ashkenazim But the Ashkenaz are The descendants of Japheth And Togarmah Which are the Southern European states and Basically Armenia The Togarmahs are the Armenians The sons of Javan Were Tarshish Which is Thought to be Possibly England Tarshish was As far as the scripture just the end of the world I mean it was as far as you could go That was the last outpost Of the known civilization You remember when Jonah went down to Catch a ship to escape the call of God He got a ship that was going to Tarshish You can't go any further than that And surely God doesn't Dwell that far away You know I can escape the presence of God If I can just get to Tarshish And so That was just the end of the world But we do know that Solomon Had ships That brought him Tin and all from Tarshish And Britannia was Originally called Britannia because of the tin And the industry that was there and so There are indications that Tarshish Was the British Isles Others seem to think Spain But most of the evidence seems to lie with The British Isles, Tarshish And so in that sense Probably the majority of us Would be the descendants of Japheth If you have a European type of background In your ancestry If your ancestors came over on the Mayflower or whatever Then you probably pretty much Are the descendants of Japheth Interesting to remember the prophecy They shall dwell in the tents of Shem That is When Shem The descendants Rejected the Messiah Then basically It was the European nations that picked up In Christianity And we dwell in the covering That God gave to Shem That covering of Jesus Christ And we've come to dwell in it and find our place of rest in it And so it's an interesting fulfillment That it is basically The people of Japheth who have embraced the gospel And carried the gospel to The rest of the world In fulfillment of the prophecy of Noah How many thousands of years ago Now These are the families And from these the coastline peoples of the Gentiles Were separated into their lands Everyone according to his own language And according to the families into their nations Now you see he at this point This is the end of Japheth He didn't carry him in too many generations But they were then separated by their languages Which took place at the time of Babel In the next chapter But he lost track of Japheth and his descendants Once the tower of Babel And so he doesn't carry their ancestry any further Nor is it necessary We are only interested in one line And that is the line that will bring us to Abraham And we'll let all of the rest of them go We gradually narrow down And narrow down until we get to Abraham And then we'll narrow down again until we get to David And then we'll narrow down again until we get to Christ And so the Bible is only interested in bringing us One line of genealogy And that is the line that will ultimately Bring us to Jesus Christ And so the sons of Ham were Cush Mizraim Put And Canaan And of Cush was Seba and Havilah And he gives the various sons of Cush Cush begat Nimrod And he began to be a mighty one on the earth He was a mighty hunter before the Lord Therefore it is said like Nimrod The mighty hunter before the Lord The word Nimrod means rebel The mighty hunter is not a Before the Lord is not in a good sense It is in a rebellious sense Really against the Lord Nimrod is really the founder Of the Babylonian religious system Of which there are many fascinating characteristics If you get into the Babylonian religion founded by Nimrod Nimrod had a wife whose name was Simmeramus Nimrod became a dictator of sorts He established a civilization Of which he became the dictator And his wife Simmeramus Became known as the queen of heaven She had a son which she claimed to be virgin born She named him Tammuz And obviously Tammuz was being groomed To be the center of worship Tammuz was out hunting When a wild boar turned on him and gored him And he lay there dead for three days Before he was found But when he was found he revived And they began to celebrate the birth of Tammuz By a very interesting celebration that took place the 25th of December And they would sit on the evening before a log on the fire The Yule log as it was known And it would be consumed in the fire But the next morning there would be a New tree brightly decorated in the house The revived Yule log that had burned Now becomes a beautifully decorated tree in the home It was an evergreen tree which was a symbol of perpetuated life It stays green, it is not deciduous, it doesn't die out To celebrate his resurrection from the three days of death Having been gored by the wild boar They began to decorate eggs And in the spring time of the year would have a great celebration Which later became known as Ashtar Named after the Greek name for his mother And the egg of course again is a symbol of continued life The perpetuation again of life Now as we declare a few simple facts to you I think that you can realize that 2 plus 2 equals 4 And suddenly we are shocked as we realize the origin Of some of those things that we have come to practice year by year In our celebrations The shocking thing is that we have no biblical base for our celebration But there is a very strong pagan base For our celebration as it goes all the way back to Nimrod the rebel And his wife Semiramis who was adored as the queen of heaven Who bore the son Tammuz who became worshipped by the people And we find that Satan established his counterfeit Extremely early in the history of man there in Babylon And that is why Babylon has become associated with the false religious systems And become synonymous with it in the scripture and in scripture typology We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse study of Genesis in our next lesson As we continue to look at The Table of Nations And we do hope you'll make plans to join us But right now I'd like to remind you that if you missed any part of today's message Or perhaps you'd like to order a copy for that special friend or loved one You can do so by simply contacting one of our customer service representatives And they'd be more than happy to assist you with the ordering details And we'll have all the contact information in just a moment Now as we close out today's program I would like to leave you with some valuable information About a resource that is designed to provide you with the necessary skills, direction, and motivation To engage your world Whether it be in the workplace, at school, or in your neighborhood or community The goal is not merely to watch and listen to this insightful DVD But rather the intent is that you'll learn to communicate the gospel This insightful resource is called The Awakening Conference And it includes numerous guest speakers that provide practical instruction on how to engage your world And it's now available from The Word for Today Simply call toll-free 1-800-272-WORD And our customer service representatives can assist you from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Monday through Friday Once again this DVD presentation is called 2010 Awakening Conference And an audio MP3 is also included Call now for your copy at 1-800-272-9673 And for those of you who still prefer to write You can use our mailing address which is The Word for Today P.O. Box 8000 Costa Mesa, California 92628 And be sure to include the call letters of this station with your correspondence And now on behalf of The Word for Today We'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry With your prayers and financial support And be sure to join us again next time As Pastor Chuck Smith continues his verse-by-verse venture through the book of Genesis That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today And now once again here's Pastor Chuck Smith May the Lord be with you and strengthen you and bless you and keep you in all your ways As you walk in fellowship with Him May your life be enriched in the fullness of that mercy and grace That He has extended towards us through Jesus our Lord God bless you and give you a beautiful week Strengthened by the Lord, may you abound in all things in Christ To the glory and the praise and the honor of our God Our Savior and our Lord In Jesus' name Kids, I've got some exciting news Pastor Chuck has written a book just for you It's called The Story of Noah Just listen Noah guided two of each species of animals into the ark And he probably carried baby dinosaurs onto the boat Because grown dinosaurs would have been too big It's so much fun to read along with Pastor Chuck and learn about God's Word And as a gift, each book contains an audio CD of Pastor Chuck actually reading The Story of Noah So your kids can read along To order your copy, call The Word for Today at 800-272-WORD Or to see a sneak preview of The Story of Noah, visit us online at thewordfortoday.org Again, the number to call is 800-272-9673 This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today in Costa Mesa, California