Dealing with Noah's Blessings and Curses

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

He exclaimed, Cursed be Canaan! He shall be the servant of servants to his brethren!

He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! And blessed by the Lord my God be Shem! And let Canaan be his servant.

May God enlarge Japheth; and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

This hub sprung from the comments box in my sister heavensbound's hub on racism, if you have not read it yet, go there now and (hopefully) come back here after!

Some years ago I dealt with the racism problem myself, born to a poor working class family in the UK, I was inherently racist in my approach to ethnicity, then I went to Jewish youth club and met an amazing woman who challenged my racist view (which of course included anti semitic stances).

My condition improved slightly, in that I then started to judge people according to how they were, rather than how they looked or spoke, or where they came from, but still there was an underlying suspicion and mistrust of those different from my tribal group (that being a 6'2" blond haired, blue eyed Japheth of Irish/Danish extraction).

When I came to faith, that undertow still existed, I just felt guilty about it!

One day, whilst I was in deep study of Genesis, I was in chapter 9, and came to where Noah was blessing and cursing his sons. Now Noah carried the authority of God to have jurisdiction over the earth, and his word was as Gods words in that instance, so what Noah spoke carried great power.

We all know that Noah made three specific pronouncements:

• Shem he blessed; "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! And blessed by the Lord my God be Shem! And let Canaan be his servant."

Now this has been the most abused statement in history, taken by the White South African and Southern states of America to condone slavery and abuse, but Noah did make it, and for secular folk, it is still prevalent in the way they deal with Hamic tribal groups, no matter how they try to broadcast their 'diversity'.

• Ham's children he cursed; " Cursed be Canaan! He shall be the servant of servants to his brethren!"
• Japheth he 'blessed' in a mixed way, for he told Japheth to extend his boundaries (which we Japheth's have done since then, even in church circles) but also that Japheth would get his provision from the tents of Shem (which is part of the reason that Japheths tend to resent Jews and Arabs); "May God enlarge Japheth; and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant."

If you look at the map, you will see that Japheth went north, and populated what is the northern European land mass, from which, courtesy of the British Empire, he spread all over the norther hemisphere and indeed the world.

Knowing (as I did) that in Christ..."There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus"... we are all equal, I realized that these curses were so imprinted upon our psyche, that we were all suffering from them, and would continue to do so until we asked God to release us from those curses and take our place in Christ's liberty.

If you have read a bible, you know that as well, and may have thought, OK, thats dealt with, but blessings and curses made by someone authorised by God to do so, don't end because Paul made a blanket statement, and anyway, have you ever tied Galatians 3 to Genesis 9 before?

I would also add that I have heard many people say that all curses were dealt with by Christ on the cross, however this is not strictly true, Christ dealt with the curse fo the law on the cross, Gods curses (and Noah was empowered by God to make them) are only negated by repentance and contrition, only God can release them, fortunately Christ is our mediator, so it can be done, but we do need to repent of living with those curses, and reinforcing them by our actions.

We need to deal with this personally.

I immediately dealt with it myself, then found an amazing thing happened.

When I now met with Hamic people groups, THEY could feel that I was 'different' than the average Japheth, in that I no longer manifested that suspicion given by the curse. (nor did I any longer feel the need to extend my boundaries further than God suggested)

I took to revealing to those believers who would listen, the truth about Noah's curses, and found that once a believer was set free from the curse, they immediately no longer emanated the fear or suspicion that they had previously done.

So if you (as a believer) have not dealt with the Noahic curses yet, do it now.

Secular man can never fully deal with this, and even if they are the most liberal person you could imagine to find, will still manifest this distrust of ethnicity related to Ham, which of course was what the original hub by Heavenbound was about.

But no Christian believer should allow these curses to affect them any longer.

Of course Japheth's would do well to ask that they be released from the blessing of always seeking to extend, and I would guess we would see fewer 5000 member churches if they did, and maybe more smaller bodies of Christ where Christ led development was the key, rather than church building programs.

Where is Shem in all this?

Well Shem still has we Japheth's living in his tents, buying his oil, technology and having received medicine, mathematics (specifically the zero) and magnificent architecture from those tents, and by the way, Shem is both Arabs and Jews, so be careful about whom you decry. Modern Muslim Arabs may well be our current enemies, but they are still loved by God.

Living this last year in Penang, Malaysia, a Muslim country where I am forbidden by law to speak openly about Christ, has been an experience all believers should have, one which would broaden even the most closed mind to the wide variety of religions that tout for business in the world.

In Europe the only 'foreigners' I saw were normally selling pirate DVD's on street corners, and naturally they were illegals and treated badly by their 'bosses'.

Here I live in a truly multicultural society that is attempting to coexist despite Islamic principals being in effect which discriminate against any non Muslim.

But Christ is alive and well in Penang amongst the Chinese and Tamil populations (we European Japheth's are a minority here) and even with some Malay's, though they have to be careful, because having been pronounced Muslim at birth, they are not allowed to change faiths.

God made us all different, yes that is true, He decided to separate us by genetic and environmental conditions, which is why I cannot work in the sun for 12 hours a day like my Tamil friends can, and why the Chinese are far more industrious than we Europeans, indeed the Chinese show more Japheth tendencies than Europeans do nowadays, and in fact, all of us who come from the northern hemisphere should assess our standing by the way we react to life, rather than where we were born, for the three people groups that God set upon the earth are better identified by their actions and mannerisms than their genealogy.

But despite that (and the tower of Babel) God made provision in Christ to reunite those who sought Him via Christ, and as stated we are all one, so if you examine yourself and find that you still harbour racialism in your heart, get right with God and deal with those Noah curses.