When the Righteous Fall
How do we respond when an upright person falls into sin? By gloating or by grieving? Today, R.C. Sproul illustrates the restoration we should seek for those who stumble.
We read that Noah plants a vineyard, he harvests his crop, he produces wine, indulges a little bit too much in the fruit of the vine, and gets into a state of drunkenness. In his state of drunkenness, he enters into his tent and obviously has just thrown himself across the bed, being careless in terms of his garments and his covering, and he has exposed himself physically in the tent. Now Ham comes in the tent, sees his father, and if we read between the lines here, what is it that he obviously does? He runs out to the brothers and says, “You guys have to see the old man.” He’s obviously treating his father in his sin with less than filial respect. He goes out and tattles, as it were, to the two brothers and makes a spectacle out of his father’s drunken stupor and his humiliated state of sinfulness.
And he brings the other brothers in to look upon their father’s nakedness. Now remember, with the creation of man and woman and the institution of marriage in Eden, with that little statement “And the two were naked and unashamed”—and here it is coming up again, this whole business of nakedness. Now, do you see the significance of the nakedness here? The father’s sin is being exposed, and it’s not like the boys had presumably never seen their father without any clothes on, but Ham is making a spectacle out of the man when he is in a state of self-destruction, in a state of sin and fall. Rather than the sons being grieved at the fall of their father and seeking his redemption, Ham is glorying in the fall of his father.
Now that attitude is universally condemned in Scripture. When someone who presumably is a godly person and is righteous falls into sin, it is not the response of the righteous person to gloat or to glory in that sin. How many times have you seen that happen? People rejoicing in the fall of the righteous man. I’ll tell you one person who got an awful lot of mileage out of that particular motif, and that was William Shakespeare. And I think part of the reason why Shakespeare’s plays have had such wide appeal is that what’s the common theme in the Shakespearean tragedy? It’s a strong character, a righteous character, a positive character, who finally manifests a fatal flaw or a fatal blemish that brings him crashing down.
People like to read that sort of thing. People enjoy watching the fall of the righteous, and that’s sin when we gloat or rejoice in the moral disintegration of an upright person rather than grieving and praying for the restoration of such a person. And that is obviously the attitude of Ham. I’m sure that there were times that the extreme righteousness of Noah got to his sons. People can resent too much righteousness. And Noah was a righteous man, and he gave a very, very strong example of character and of morality that would be very difficult for his sons to follow and to live up to.
And so, one son, when he sees his father fall, he’s rejoicing and wants to make a big thing out of it, and he brings the others: “You’ve got to go in and see him, this one who always walked upright, walked with the Lord, who was always so righteous—he’s not so righteous now. Go look at him.” But how did the other two sons handle it? Shem and Japheth refused to look upon their father’s nakedness, and they did the very thing that God had done for Adam and Eve. They provided a covering for their father’s nakedness, and they walked into the tent backwards, taking a cloak so that they wouldn’t have to look upon their father’s nakedness. And they covered their father. They covered his sin. This isn’t a cover-up operation, but it is an act of mercy to one who really hasn’t even had the opportunity to repent yet. The man is in a drunken stupor, and he hasn’t even had a chance to come to himself and to repent of his sin. But his two sons gave him that opportunity.
