Twig and berries

Genesis 9:23
So Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon the shoulders of both, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness.

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the Bible and how it’s full of stories of sinners. I’m sure we’ve all heard, “Noah was a drunk!” But was Noah really a drunk? The Bible accounts for one time that Noah drank too much. This, to me, does not make him a drunk; it made him drunk. Maybe we could correctly say, “Noah got drunk, once.”

This short story, however, isn’t about Noah’s drunkenness, what we imply to be his “big sin”. It’s not about Ham disgracing his father, though he did. And, it’s not about Shem and Japheth, though they appear to be the heroes. Nope, this short story is about the garment and how it covers the nakedness.

It wasn’t until the fall in the Garden that man was made aware of his nakedness. Nakedness, in the Bible, is not just a picture of people walking around with no clothes. Nakedness is also a metaphor for unrighteousness. Stories in the Bible of nakedness are both literal and metaphorical.

Likewise, the garment, while a literal article of clothing, is also a metaphor. Looking back to the earlier chapters of Genesis, the first thing God did for man after the fall was this: He created clothing for them, garments, out of animal skins (Genesis 3:21). This was the first sacrifice and it was a foreshadowing of the cross. God covered their nakedness the same way He covers our unrighteousness: with His Perfect Sacrifice.

Back to Noah. Did he make a mistake by drinking too much on this particular occasion? Obviously, yes. His drunkenness caused him to lose sight of what is proper and he flopped down in his tent, naked. Ham, like so many of us, saw his father’s nakedness, his mistake, and desired to point it out to his brothers. How often does this happen today?

Shem and Japheth chose not to see their father’s mistake. Instead they chose to cover him with a garment. But before they could cover their father, they had to cover themselves with the same garment. The Bible says that they laid the garment over themselves before backing into the tent to lay it over their father.

Friends, this is why the garment is the most important part of the story: it covers nakedness. Before we can go out and cover the nakedness of the world, that is, unrighteousness with Jesus’ righteousness, we have to first be conscious of the fact that we are covered in His righteousness. When we realize that we are covered by His sacrifice we are graciously enabled to cover the other sinners we connect with with that very same righteousness. This is what Paul meant when he said, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

It is the righteousness of Christ that covers our sins. So then, that same righteousness is what we should use to cover the sins of the world, choosing not to see their nakedness and point it out, but rather seeing each person as God does through Jesus: perfected, sanctified, clean, clothed, and restored.