Genesis 38 Made for Springer

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filseck and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the

Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com

Here's Pastor Don. Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. We're gonna go ahead and get started here, but I wanted to introduce myself.

I'm Don Filseck. I'm the Lead Pastor here, and glad that you've all gathered together this morning to worship our great

God. On this beautiful Sunday morning. It's glorious out there. Be sure to fill out the connection card you received as you kind of find your seats.

There's a connection card you received. Fill that out. You can turn that into the black box over there underneath the clock on the table and anything you choose that you want to turn in goes in that black box.

Offerings as well. So if you choose to give an offering this week, there's an envelope provided for you.

We don't pass an offering plate because we don't want anybody to feel the pressure of an offering plate going by, but we are grateful for the way that God has provided for our church through those envelopes.

If you're not going to use that envelope, there's a place to recycle it back there. Again, just, I mean, no pressure on that at all.

But anything that's marked Expansion Fund, whether it's on the envelope or on the check, we'll go towards our desire to eventually get out of this facility and build our own building on our property over there on East McGillan that we purchased.

So that's available there. And then one extra announcement. If you got a chance, hopefully you got a chance to read the green card that we passed out here.

Take that in your hand and make sure you've checked it out. And Kyle, where's

Kyle? Kyle's right back here. He is willing to take any kids that you would like to step out during the reading of the word this morning, just because it tends to be a little bit more

PG -13 in this particular text. And so we just wanted to provide that as an opportunity for you to let your kids step out if they would choose to.

It's our desire here that everybody at Recast is growing in three spheres, three areas of their lives.

Growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service. So if you were to draw like a

Venn diagram, that's the one with the circles that overlap. We believe that kind of the sweet spot of where those three meet is the place of growing best in God.

And so growing in faith, that is our trust of who God is and what he's doing in the world, as revealed through the

Word of God, that we know him as he is and we believe him, trust him, live our lives according to his way.

That's faith. Growing in community is relationship together, that we need each other. We are created to be communal creatures.

We need each other and others need us. And so growing in community. And then lastly, God has designed each one of us for a purpose, for a reason.

We have a specific function, a specific role to play in the body, in the community, and that's a specific area of service that he has given to you.

So understanding how you made, some of you are teachers, some of you are helpers, some of you were here early setting up chairs and and you're working with your hands and others of you are kind of more in the concept area and some of you are working with kids and there's all different kinds of areas and avenues of service.

But we believe that if if you're growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, then you are on the right path with God.

And we're gonna see this morning, some of you, this is your first time here, I recognize that, and we're gonna see a really dicey story.

As a matter of fact, I would suggest to you one of the most crazy dicey. You see the title of the sermon?

Made for Springer? Yes, that's talking about Jerry Springer, okay? That's the kind of story that we're looking at this morning.

And so if it's your first time here, not every week is like this. But we're gonna dive in because this is the

Word of God. I walk through chapter by chapter believing that this is God's revealed Word.

It's him showing how he's worked in human history. Sometimes that means looking at some significant messes, right?

Because how many of you know life gets messy? Raise your hand if you've seen some messes in your life, okay? So you've seen that, you've identified it, you know it, and Scripture doesn't kid -glove that kind of stuff.

It shows us. It doesn't gloss it over like everybody in the Bible was perfect, but they're real people.

And so that's what we're looking at here is this dicey story of a dude who chose to step outside of his community.

That's something that we often miss at the beginning because there's all this sexuality in the text, and there's all kinds of weirdness in it.

And so sometimes you miss the fact that this is Judas stepping outside of the covenant community, his family chosen by God, and then we see the ramifications of that.

Well, last week we saw Judah and his brothers betray Joseph and sell him off into slavery.

And this week we see Judah turn away from his entire family and move in among the Canaanites.

He leaves his life with God's people in exchange for life with the world, life with the pagans, life with the

Canaanites. And he gets himself caught up in a lifestyle that we might expect from going out and living among the

Canaanites. God does not call us out and save us to loneliness and just merely personal salvation, but he calls us out into community together.

Another way of saying this is saying that we need others, and others need us.

We need accountability, right? We need encouragement. We need fellowship.

We need balance. And then we might need a little bit more accountability. Because the fact of the matter is,

I think all of us recognize in our own hearts the tendency, how we are prone to stray away from that which

God desires for us. And there's a natural tendency in us to want to pull away from community, pull away from accountability, pull away from people looking into our lives and speaking truth there, right?

And so there's a tendency for us to want to do that. And in our text, we see Judah run away from his family.

He runs away from accountability, and he gets a new set of friends who will tell him what he wants to hear, and a new community among those who do not worship

God. And in this departure, his family suffers, and he himself will go further astray from the promises of God than he ever thought he would.

But Judah cannot get away from the plans of God for his life. And even as his family crumbles around him,

Judah is shaken awake by his own hypocrisy and shame. God forbid that he would need to take any one of us down a road like this to wake us up from our own wanderings.

But God is faithful to use radical means to draw back his wandering sheep.

And sometimes it takes, if we're honest, it takes sometimes a lot to get our attention. So we're gonna open our

Bibles to Genesis chapter 38. Again, if you didn't get that, read the green sheet as I'm gonna read this.

It's gonna be pretty direct. You will have questions from your kids, if they're still sitting in here, from my reading of this text.

And although it's pretty crass and it's direct, I believe that this is the exact text that God desires for us to look at this morning and to read.

He has something he wants to say. This is the word of God, recast Genesis chapter 38. And again, you can find that on page 28 in one of those paperback

Bibles. If anybody doesn't have a Bible, go ahead and raise your hand. And Mark can bring you one of those and make sure everybody has a copy of the word of God here.

Genesis 38. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adolamite whose name was

Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went into her.

And she conceived and bore a son and he called his name Ur. She conceived again and bore a son and she called his name

Onan. Yet again, she bore a son and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chezeb when she bore him.

By the way, Shelah is supposed to be a woman's name, right? And Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was

Tamar. But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother -in -law to her and raise up offspring for your brother.

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother.

And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord and he put him to death also. Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter -in -law, remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah, my son, grows up.

For he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house.

In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheep shears, he and his friend

Hira the Adullamite. And when Tamar was told, your father -in -law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up and sat at the entrance of Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah.

For she saw that Shelah was grown up and she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

He turned to her at the roadside and said, come, let me come into you, for he did not know that she was his daughter -in -law.

She said, what will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, I will give you a young goat from the flock.

And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it. He said, what pledge shall I give? She replied, your signet, your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.

So he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away and taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood.

When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adolamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her and he asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who is at Enaim at the roadside?

And they said, no cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her. Also the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here.

And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her.

About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter -in -law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.

And Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father -in -law by the woman to whom these belong,

I am pregnant. And she said, please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.

Oh, snap. It doesn't say that in the text, but I'm adding that. Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son,

Sheila, and he did not know her again. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb.

And when she was in labor, one put out a hand and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first.

But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore, his name was called

Perez. Afterwards, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called

Zerah. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I confess to you that this seems like a strange passage to read just before we come into a song here in a time of worshiping you.

And we're trying to praise your name, and we see this mess and this crud and even some awkwardness in the terminology that is used here, and certainly some misunderstandings about the culture of that time versus the culture of this time, and what's going on in the text.

And it just seems creepy and weird and strange. And at the same time, this is your word. And there is a message in this for us.

There's a message in this for our culture. As we see in this text, a man who has given himself over to the world and given himself over to his own pleasure and his own desires.

And we see how easy that is in our culture, in our day and age. And maybe there's not that much difference between that culture and ours after all.

But Father, we rejoice in the movement and the way that you work in this text because we recognize that the child of Perez is going to have a child who's going to have a child who's going to have a child, and that's going to eventually lead all the way to the birth of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And in Him we rejoice. In Him we have hope. We certainly don't see hope in this text and in this passage as it's written.

We see messes and junk and crud and people acting like sinners. But Father, we all act like sinners and we all recognize our need for a

Savior. And so, Father, as we have an opportunity to sing songs to You, may we rejoice with hearts that are given over to You, recognizing that salvation comes only in Your Son, Jesus.

And it's in His name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, thanks a lot for Rob for leading us, particularly this week in Josh's absence.

I'm grateful for him stepping in and leading the band this week. Be sure you have your Bibles open in front of you.

That is kind of the outline of the text. And so I'm going to walk us through Genesis chapter 38.

And so it's very beneficial for you to have that open in front of you. Obviously, it's a bit of a sordid text. I've already read it. But get as comfortable as possible.

That means that you can get up and get more coffee or donuts or juice at any time during the message. If the seat that you're sitting in gets uncomfortable, you can go up, go to the back and stand up and stretch out back there.

Whatever it takes to kind of keep our focus on the Word of God here this morning. So here we go. Verse 1 immediately ties the events of chapter 38 back in with what we looked at last week, which was chapter 37.

In other words, Judah turns aside and moves in among the Canaanites about the same time that he and his brothers deceived his father about the death of Joseph.

Now, what motivates Judah to leave his family is not directly revealed in the text, but one might kind of have some ideas.

I don't think it takes a lot of imagination to think about why Judah would jump ship and run.

It was Judah's idea to betray Joseph in the first place, wasn't it? It was his idea to ultimately say, well, hey, let's sell him into Egypt.

Let's sell him as a slave. And so now he has to, in the context of his family, constantly be living a lie.

Now, some of us have some skeletons in the closet. Some of us have lived a lie in the past and you've had some issues back there.

And so you're kind of like, you know what it means to kind of churn up some of your emotions and your feelings and constantly be trying to keep and try to live a lie.

And that's a hard way to live. And I imagine that that is in some part the motivation for Judah jumping ship from his family and going to live among the

Canaanites the way that we see it here early in this text. Staying around would require watching his father constantly mourning the death of Joseph.

Staying with his family requires living a daily lie. And so I wonder if the stress of that hypocrisy was not just thoroughly eating him up alive.

I think a lot of us can relate to that. You've had a secret that you've kept from others and it's been difficult. And you know what it means to have some level of hypocrisy in your life, some level of it consuming you from the inside out.

So the phrase that we see here in the text that he turned aside, look at verse one with me. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain

Adolamite. And the Adolamites are Canaanites. They're a tribe of different people that lived in the area, the area known as Canaan obviously.

And the Hebrews have moved in, the Jews have moved into this area. And that's what we've got going on here. So we've got the covenant people of God, which is

Judah's family, which are all offspring of Jacob. And then they are in the midst of another culture that worships idols and all of this other stuff that's going on around them.

The word turned aside in Hebrew usually indicates moral direction as much as geographical direction.

So often when we see the phrase in Hebrew in the Old Testament that so -and -so turned aside, it has kind of the notion of there is a straight path to stay on.

There is a way that God desires for us to go. And to turn aside often results in some kind of pain, suffering, some kind of moral compromise or something to that effect.

And I think it's no less meant to be the case here that we, when you see the phrase turned aside, your mind ought to switch on.

I bet something bad is about to happen here in the text. Something's going to go wrong. He's leaving the accountability and protection of his family.

And he connects with a man from Adola, a Canaanite named Hira. They became good friends. As a matter of fact, they became such good friends that we're going to see that he sends him to pay for a prostitute for him.

Okay, so I mean, they're pretty tight. They know each other really well. I mean, he knows, like, I don't know from my personal experience how close you have to be with a person to send for payment.

But you know what I'm saying. They were close enough to know each other's crud, know what's going on.

And I mean, some of you have really fast friends that you've trusted with the deeper, darker secrets of your heart, and you've shared that, you've got that kind of connection.

But he connects with this Adolamite, this Canaanite. His name is Hira, and they are close.

While he lives among the Adolamites, he finds an attractive lady who throughout the text remains nameless.

We do not find out the name of the wife of Judah, which is kind of strange.

We only know that her father's name was Shua. He sees her, he takes her, and he gets with her, if you know what

I mean. The phrase takes routinely implies marriage, and so we need not assume that this is necessarily sketchy.

This is not necessarily rape or something like that. They get married to some degree, at least as much as culturally, and that setting was understandable.

But when the words in Hebrew saw, took, and then any type of euphemism for sex occur in the same context, this usually implies a much more physically oriented relationship than just the arranged marriage that was common during this time and era.

So there is some semblance of lust that is involved in this, some semblance of something beyond just a routine, run -of -the -mill marriage during this time.

It seems fair to say, after studying this text this week, that Judah is intentionally portrayed in the text.

If you want to know something of the character of Judah, a summary statement would be over -sexualized.

Okay, it's clear from this text that that's what we get to know about Judah, is his sexuality. That's the primary thing that is highlighted throughout this text.

But we see that his wife conceives three times in three short verses. She gives birth to three sons.

Their names are Ur, Onan, and Shelah. And like I mentioned earlier, isn't that supposed to be a girl's name?

But it ends up being a boy's name here in the text. Between verses 3 and 6, about 15 years at least fly by.

We go from, in verse 3, the birth of Ur, to verse 6, the marriage of Ur, which again, at least 15 years, somewhere in that ballpark during, you know, what would have been culturally marriageable at that time in that era.

It was quite common to get married in the teens. And so that's probably what happened in this context. But I want to point out that we can quickly become lulled into assuming some things about Scripture when we read it, as if we're getting the whole picture.

We're getting everything that is declared about these lives. So we could begin to think that everything in the life of the biblical characters was tragedy or crisis or miraculous or God was appearing to them.

Or how many of you, like when you read those Old Testament stories, or you were in Sunday school class as a kid, you were like, man, what would have been like to be

Moses? What would have been like to be one of the patriarchs where every time you turn around, there's

God in a burning bush, or something amazing is happening. Fifteen years go by. We know nothing about the history.

We know nothing about the upbringing of Ur. We know nothing about the upbringing of Onan. We know that they proved themselves to be wicked here in just a moment.

But we don't know much about that. And I just want to point out that when we read Scripture, we need to read it with that lens that there are intentional gaps in there.

There are portions of life that are just lived just like your life and mine. And sometimes we think God is the

God of the crisis. God is the God of the moment. He's the foxhole God. He's the God of when things are going super great.

But what about the mundane? What about those weeks that go by and it's just kind of like little drools coming out of the corner of your mouth? It's like, wake up and get my coffee and go do this and do that.

And God's there in those times too. But we see here in Scripture that it's recorded for us when those crises happen, when the big things happen, we get a look in and get an opportunity to see what's going on.

We don't know everything about this family, but we certainly know what God needed to get his point across to us here today.

We do find out that Judah took it upon himself to arrange a marriage for his oldest son. He is taking care of his family.

And Ur, it was an arranged marriage. And Ur married a Canaanite woman named

Tamar, who's going to obviously figure as a major character in this text moving forward.

She was a Canaanite. But we find one of the first of the entire Bible, we're all the way into chapter 38 of Genesis, and there's a first here in verse 7.

But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.

That's the first time we've seen that in the entirety of Scripture. Have we seen some wickedness? Have we seen some people act poorly so far in the first 38 chapters of the book?

How many of you might think that this would have happened before now? Like, maybe there's been some wickedness that's going on here.

But I want to point out a few observations about this. Where does this strike you? I would assume that it strikes you probably in a similar way that it strikes me like, wait a minute.

This guy was so bad that God put him to death. Like, what did he do? And anybody that kind of crosses your mind?

Like, because I don't want to do that. Like, whatever it was. I mean, could you just maybe spell that out for me and like clarify what is it that I have to not do to avoid just being put to death right on the spot?

Well, the text tells us, I want to clarify a few points here. The text tells us that this was judgment, does it not?

It actually tells us God did this as a judgment to him. Meaning that, and I want to clarify, meaning that we do not have the freedom to assume that when bad things happen to others or when bad things happen to us, that it is because we have done something evil.

The text has to reveal to us, has to state in words that this was the judgment of God.

Are you getting what I'm saying? It doesn't presuppose that every time somebody dies, that, oh, they must have done evil.

Every time something bad happens, oh, it's the judgment of God. Every time a Katrina happens, oh, that New Orleans.

You know, every time that evil strikes some place or something, you know, some tragedy happens that, oh,

I've got to figure out what I did wrong. That is not the picture that we have in scripture, and particularly in this text.

He has to tell us, God has to tell us through written word that this was a judgment on her.

It's not like, I'm reading through the book of Job right now, just in my personal time, and Job's friends, well -meaning as they were, they got this wrong.

They assumed that Job should be sitting in the dust and ashes. His family's decimated, all of his crops have been burned up.

Everything's been destroyed, and he's supposed to be sitting in the dust and ashes going, God, what did I do wrong? And he's supposed to get down to the root of his sin and figure it out, and his friends had it all wrong.

His friends were encouraging him, you know, figure out what you did wrong, apologize to God, and then everything will be made right, and they had it completely backwards in that.

But the second thing I observe is that we must remember that God does do this from time to time. So I can't completely soften this away and go, well, okay, our

God doesn't judge like that. Our God won't do that. I want you to be very careful with that phrase, because I think many of us have had that phrase on the tip of our tongues before.

My God wouldn't, and then fill in the blank. And often what he wouldn't do looks a lot like what you wouldn't do.

Have you noticed that? How often do we fabricate God in our image and make him like us?

Well, he's just so, he's just so compassionate, and he's so tolerant, and he's so kind, and oh, he's a big teddy bear,

I just want to give him a hug. And do we fashion God after the way that we want him to look, or are we willing to take what he has shown us of himself and start with that as the bedrock of the character of God?

Will God at times see somebody as wicked and take their life? Would your

God do that? If your answer is no to that, then I'm suggesting to you that you are not in line with what the

God of the Bible has revealed of himself. As uncomfortable as that might make us, how many of you know that God is not first and foremost primarily concerned with our comfort?

Have you noticed that? So that's, I mean, it makes us uncomfortable sometimes. It ought to make us uncomfortable when we come up against the creator of all, the majestic one, the holy one, the righteous one, the one who has all authority and all power.

How many of you know that that's an uncomfortable notion to me when I want to be autonomous?

I want to have it my way right now the way that I want it to be. There's going to be some discomfort in life when my personal autonomy comes up against the one who is truly sovereign, right?

So thinking through these things, God has the freedom to do this, and let's be sure to let

God be God, let him be who he is and how he's revealed himself. The third thing, our minds immediately jump to this being an uber bad sin.

Like, what did this guy do? I mean, Ur struck dead on the spot. He must have killed a baby whale while eating a panda steak or something.

I mean, what could he have done that was so evil and so wicked that God took him right here, right now, snap.

I couldn't think of anything worse, you know. Once in a while, it's good just to lighten the mood.

But we need to be careful because in just a couple of verses, his brother is going to be, his life is going to be taken too.

So we can't just look at Ur in this, but we've got to recognize that this is going to happen again in the immediate context and look at it and say,

Onan is going to die as well for his wickedness, and we know what he did. And what he did was be selfish and greedy.

Okay, wait a minute. Now you're getting a little personal. Now you're getting a little too close to home.

You mean to tell me God could take somebody's life for being greedy? And by the way, the sin, when you take down all of the stuff about what is this sin that Onan does here in a second, we're going to look through that and kind of filter that down.

It ultimately boils down to that. Greed, greed and selfishness is what it amounts to.

And I think probably, I'm not going to ask for you to raise your hand. I already know you should if you don't, even if you don't. But I mean, if we were to show our hands of how many of you have struggled with greed, how many of you have struggled with selfishness, every hand should go up.

And so we're going to like be careful to just not to assume that this must have been a super bad sin that he committed.

And that comes to the last point. And that's it. I think our minds immediately go down the wrong path here. It is said in the text that Ur was wicked.

Not merely that Ur did wicked things, but Ur was, as a part of his nature, as a part of his character, as a part of his heart, he was in his essence wicked.

Not merely that he did wicked things. So how many of you would suggest that David, the man after God's own heart, those of you who know the

Bible stories and have been kicking it around the kingdom for a while, how many of you, raise your hand if you think David did some things that were wicked.

You can think of a couple right off the top of your head, right? Couple things that David did wicked. And yet it's declared of David that he was a man after God's own heart.

How could he do wicked things and be a man after God's own heart? And I think that gets down to where we live, right?

How we know that we can have a heart that has been forgiven and given new life and given new strength, and yet can we not still do wicked things?

And so it's about our hearts. It's not merely about our behavior.

Now, should our behavior be coming in line with where our hearts are? Yeah, absolutely. And Jesus talks about all different kinds of things, about what flows out of what we do, what we say, how we act flows out of our hearts.

And so should we be improving? And if we're really belonging to God and giving our lives over to him, we will be taking better steps every day to walk on higher ground, to treat others with equity and justice and kindness in our community, and to be walking out there in a way that brings honor and glory to God.

So hopefully that clarifies what's going on with er here. It's not to suggest that God couldn't take any one of us at any time for that very reason.

And we know where our hearts are, but it ought to be some kind of a, well, okay, God has in his handbag of ways to work with us and deal with us to, by his grace, take us.

Right? That might be a grace to him before we defame his name, before, you know, and I've prayed that before.

God, before I destroy my ministry, before I do something that's just so far out there that it corrupts and defames, would you just take me?

I would prefer that. Does that make sense? I'd prefer for you to just take me home before I ever deface my family or defame my church or defame

Christ. And that would be his grace to me if he were so, if he were so gracious to take me before I would destroy ministry and break people's lives and hearts.

Judah goes to his second born who has lost his first born son, a big setback in his life,

I'm sure, brokenness and mess there. But he goes to his second born and invokes a really strange to our ears cultural requirement that is actually in writing in the pages of scripture.

So if you're taking notes, you could jot this reference down. Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses 5 through 10.

Talk about the Leveret marriage, that has nothing to do with the tribe of Levi.

Levera is the Hebrew word for brother -in -law. So that's where that comes from.

And in Deuteronomy 25, 5 through 10, it spells out this brother -in -law marriage. A man whose brother dies in that ancient culture without offspring would be responsible to marry his sister -in -law.

This is an actual marriage. This is not just get with her and have a baby. This is an actual marriage to care for her, is to provide for her, and ultimately to produce children with her.

But the twist on this law was that the child would be, any child born of that union would be reckoned to the brother's name, not to the living guy, but to the dead guy.

And it would be given to him. And the responsibility to raise and rear that child as an adopted son would be on the living brother -in -law.

To try to make this clear, if Onan and Tamar have a son, that son will be first place for the inheritance when

Judah, their father, kicks the bucket. So when Judah dies, who's going to get the lion's share? Who's going to get the double portion of the blessing?

Who's going to get the double inheritance? Any child born to Onan and Tamar. And yet he's going to be responsible for caring for him, feeding him, taking care of him.

But then in the end, all of the, you know, a large portion of the blessing that would skip over his sons, leapfrog his children, and would go to this offspring of the oldest son,

Ur. So he's got some motivation to keep the money, keep the wealth, keep the blessing in his family.

He wants his biological son with his wife to be the first one.

So every time it was business time between Onan and Tamar, technically speaking, business time. A couple of you have seen that sketch.

The rest of you don't know what I'm talking about, but you do know what I'm talking about. But business time between Onan and Tamar, he practiced an ancient method of birth control to keep her from getting pregnant, one that doesn't usually work very well.

Just to caution you on that, you're kind of like, this is, I'm learning stuff here. You're writing it down. Not super effective, just to clarify, okay?

But ancient nonetheless, okay? And notice that Onan wants to look like he is doing right by his family.

So he actually marries her and looks like he is performing his duty. Well, the kids just aren't, we're just not having kids.

I don't know what's happening. I mean, that's not, you know. But all the while, he's trying to prevent the pregnancy.

He is not only sexually motivated, that's where our minds turn. We live in a time of sexual liberation, sexual rights, all of this stuff.

We have wrong thinking about sex to begin with. But even in this time, our mind turns immediately to the joy and the excitement and enthusiasm and pleasure of sex.

And so we assume he's sexually motivated here, but he is actually selfishly trying to keep the inheritance for his children alone.

He is greedy, he is financially motivated, and he is despising and disrespecting both his brother -er who has passed on and his sister -in -law,

Tamar, who according to her culture, her value, her desire, her passion is going to be tied up in wanting to have children.

She would rightly perceive that she is the right person for this lineage to come through. She has the full expectation that she will give birth and ought to give birth to a son.

So Onan's behavior was wicked, and God also put him to death. Now, one reason we misunderstand the situation altogether is that for millennia, not centuries, but for millennia, human sexuality was defined by procreation.

It was defined by procreation. To have sex was to assume pregnancy. Have you realized what an era we live in?

How distinct this last 40 years has been from the rest of human history?

The vast, vast, huge expanse of human history. And for about 40 years, we've had sexual liberation where sex has become detached from pregnancy, right?

It's not, well, I mean, you expect to not get pregnant if you don't want to. And so in ancient times, having children was considered a right.

Having children was an expectation where now we would say that not having children is a right.

Not having children or having children on your time frame is the expectation.

Do you see how in just 40 years, this past 40 years, we've flipped all of human history on its head in regard to sexuality?

So we think of sexuality primarily as entertainment where for the vast portion of human history, it was considered procreation.

It was considered having children. This guy didn't murder anyone. He didn't do something that seems too crazy.

He selfishly neglected one of his wives. He showed contempt for his brother. And God took his life.

And I just want to suggest to you that this tells us something about God's interest in the family, about the way we interact in our households, the way that we interact with each other.

Is he concerned for the way we treat others in our family with respect, being fair, kind, just, and honest in the way we interact with each other?

The sin is graphic in the text. It's awkward. It's culturally disconnected from our modern world. And yet it seems clear that God takes neglect, greed, and selfishness seriously.

Judah has now lost two sons. He's lost Ur and now he's lost Onan. And he begins to think maybe

Tamar is cursed because he doesn't see the wickedness of his sons as maybe a part of the cause, but he actually looks at Tamar and goes, well, wait a minute.

You are not getting ahold of my youngest. You've already killed my first two. In his mind, he's thinking she's cursed.

The death of both of his sons coincided with marriage to Tamar. And so he puts her away.

And he doesn't even take real good care of her. As a matter of fact, he sends her back to her own father's house so that he might take care of her, hoping that she might just fade away.

She is being put on the back burner. She is being dismissed from the family, if you will. The Hebrew phrase in the course of time indicates about one to two years technically that passed by.

And during this time, Judah, we get a record that Judah's wife, who again has remained nameless during the entire text, she dies and he mourns for her.

So Judah has lost two sons. Judah has lost a wife all in the course of this one chapter.

He is living a bitterly painful life absent from the covenant community of God, away from his family, out among the

Canaanites. So he takes a business trip, takes a business trip up to Timnah for a couple of weeks for the annual sheep shearing festival.

Now, I'm not making this up. This is like the industry trade show for shepherds, okay? This is what happens every year in ancient culture.

This is a really common thing. We've got documents, you know, all kinds of inscribing and all of this stuff about this time of the year.

It was just massive celebration. It was Mardi Gras. It was like the county fair.

It was a time of celebrating wealth and blessing for those in the sheep industry. Think about it. And during most of these times, to get any commodity from an animal was to lose the animal, right?

To get meat from it to, you know, whatever. But to actually get the wool from a sheep, it just keeps producing.

That's the cash crop of shepherds. And so a lot of us think, oh, you shepherd sheep so that you can have some mutton, you know?

No, you shepherd sheep so that you can get their wool. And this was the time of sheep shearing.

It was usually a couple of weeks window of time in the springtime. And go and get that wool.

They could turn into pretty raucous parties, according to historical documents and historians. When Tamar finds out that Judah is going up to Timnah, she hatches a plot, a pretty sordid plot.

She's supposed to bear the next of kin in the line of Judah. But without a husband, she is bereft of care.

She has been jilted. She has been discarded. She has been scorned. And I think the phrase, the common phrase in English that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned applies in this text.

And she is going to take matters in her own hands. She veils herself so that she's unrecognizable.

And there's two phrases that would be almost identical if it wasn't for a figure of speech. So that she veils herself is another way of saying she wrapped herself up.

But then it says next she wrapped herself up. Well, that's a euphemism or a figure of speech for perfuming herself.

And so that's a pretty common phrase in the Hebrew language It'd be the same phrase that's used anytime that anybody puts perfume on.

So she wraps herself up in a veil. She perfumes herself. And she seats herself down in the way just outside of a

Naim on the way to Timnah. And her motivation is openly declared in verse 14. What's she planning on doing there?

Why is she there? Well, Shelah by this time is certainly of marriageable age. As a matter of fact, it's suggested by many commentaries that she was already of marriage, he was already of marriageable age and that ultimately

Judah was just looking for excuses and just invented that. But he's marriageable age and she sees the writing on the wall that Judah has no real intention of wedding them together.

And she's not getting any younger and she's confident that she is the one through whom the line is supposed to go.

Judah thinks she's a prostitute and solicits her services. Again, the phrase he turned aside.

Something bad's gonna happen. He turned aside to her at the roadside. And this is the identical phrase that we find in one of my favorite passages of scripture,

Proverbs 7 in regard to talking about the adulterous, teaching our sons, teaching our children about how to process adultery and prostitution and these types of things and fornication.

And so Solomon the wise in talking with his sons says this statement in the middle of Proverbs 7.

And now, oh, sons, listen to me and be attentive to the words of my mouth. Let not your heart, here's the phrase, turn aside to her ways.

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways. Do not stray into her path, speaking of an adulteress, for many a victim has she laid low and all of her slain are a mighty throng.

Her house is the way to the grave, to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.

Do not turn aside to her. But Judah is not a man of integrity.

He has lost his wife. He has lost two of his sons. He is lonely. He is in party mode.

He is away on business. And this is a case of oldest profession meets man out of town on business.

It can be truly said that a person's true character can be known by what they do when they are anonymous, right?

Think about that. If you can be anonymous, what do you try to get away with? What do you think you can do when you are anonymous?

Community is very valuable, is it not? Is community valuable? Is being connected with people?

It works like this. I sense and I feel community when I'm driving in the area of Kalamazoo and I drive differently for fear of cutting one of you off in traffic.

Okay? Do you get what I'm saying? And so do I drive that way in Chicago as well? Do I drive that way when we're on a family road trip out west?

Well, yeah, because then my kids are in the car. Do you get what I'm saying, though? I mean, is there accountability in community?

Yeah, and we need that. We actually need that. If we're honest with ourselves, our hearts are prone to wander were it not for the

God -given sense of community that we have together. We need that, right? Judas shows us a man whose sexuality is out of balance here, who is highlighted in his anonymity here.

And it's clear that he was able to be enticed in this way. It even shows something about Tamar's understanding about her father -in -law, that she knew that this might have a chance of working.

Have you ever thought about that? She sets forward this plot and this plan to entice her father -in -law sexually when she has some sense.

It's like you wouldn't be able to put a slot machine in front of me.

I don't really struggle. Gambling isn't one of my things. And so if you were trying to entice me to gamble my money away, it's just not good luck with that.

I mean, it's not going to happen. But do you get what I'm saying? I mean, there's something about Judas' character that is shown to others that I believe he was, everybody knew he was overly sexualized anyways.

His speech is very brash and direct in the text, as one might expect that they would speak to a prostitute.

Again, I don't know by firsthand experience, but I would assume that that turns into a pretty direct conversation.

She asks for payment. He offers a goat. But as soon as he offers, you know, he pulls out his wallet.

Oh, spent my last goat. So he offers to send her one later, right?

And right, it checks in the mail. I got it covered.

Just trust me. So reasonably, she asks for some type of a pledge to prove he will pay up.

So he leaves his, are you ready? He leaves his driver's license and his monogrammed wristwatch.

I mean, basically that's the equivalent of what this dude leaves to a prostitute on the side of the street in order to guarantee he's gonna come back and bring her a goat, okay?

During this era, there was a cylinder, a metal cylinder worn around the neck by a cord.

And that would be your signature. The word signet is where we get our word signature. It comes from that word.

And it was a signet. Sometimes it was a ring. Some of you are more familiar with the ring that was stamped in wax or something like that, that had an impression on it.

Well, this would be taken off your neck and rolled in wet clay or rolled in soft wax.

And it would leave an imprint as you rolled it. It had a texture to it. Is that making sense? And so as you rolled it out, that was your signature and it was unique to you.

And so that was a way of signing documents or sealing envelopes or sealing any kind of correspondence or anything like that.

You would roll this thing out. So he does indeed leave his literal signature there with her as well as a walking staff that would have been easily identified as his.

That was pretty common in that time. Just like maybe your car is tricked out and it's obviously that's you.

You know, mine's the Hyundai with the roof rack on it. So now when you see that driving around, you know that that's me. I mean, his walking staff was like that.

They would have known who he was. I want you to take a moment now to consider how brash sexual sin really can become.

He leaves his photo ID with a prostitute in order to obtain her services.

Anybody think that's ignorant? I think we all think that's ignorant.

And yet that's the way that, that's the direction that sexual sin leads is to ignorance.

Think about this. People take, for real, people take pictures of themselves with no clothes on and text them to others or email them to others or send them to others, assuming anonymity.

Assuming that that's not going to come back on them. Really? Do you see how sexual sin is kind of like, duh, when we stand in the light of day and we look at it, does it not look stupid?

But sometimes in the darkness, that makes sense. I'll leave my, leave my

ID. I'm desperate here, you know, or I'll take pictures and send them to others for real.

And we're not talking about youth, which by the way, I just want to clarify this. I want you parents to make sure you hear this.

I don't know if you're hearing it. You probably are hearing it, but you need to hear this. And this is just a public service announcement. This is into my notes.

But every time a child, if your teenager has pictures on their phone of another naked teen, it is child pornography according to the police, according to the prosecutor, and he will prosecute.

Every single picture is one count of possession of child pornography. And every picture sent is distribution of child pornography.

It doesn't matter if your kid's 15 and they have a picture of another 15 year old. It doesn't matter if they're 17 and they have a picture of another 17 year old.

Are you getting me? And there are people in our community who are going through that with their kids right now.

Don't think that this is somewhere in New York, that this is out in California, that this is someplace else that that's happening.

There are people in Matawan who are in the court systems right now trying to fight for their kids. We need to be educating our kids.

We need to be involved parents. We need to be talking with our kids and letting them know about this stuff because it will own them and it will destroy them.

And it could destroy us. It's not just the kids. Politicians are struggling with this. The president of France is struggling with this.

So who thinks it's a little bit dicey that we give our kids a cell phone with a camera on it and politicians can't handle having a cell phone with a camera on it?

They just think. We got to think about this stuff. Sexual sin drives us to doing stupid things.

People surf the web and they type in search engines things that they would never say out loud.

Would you say those things you've searched for? Assuming that they are being anonymous when everything your

IP address has ever searched for is recorded, saved, and available for someone to search and it may even be actively watched.

You might be on somebody's tag right now. Somebody at the attorney general's office might be checking out your

IP address. Now all of this is not to say be wise in covering up your tracks. I'm suggesting to you rather that sexual sin has such power that when it is indulged in even the least, it turns a wise and powerful man, as the proverb says, into a loaf of bread.

Wise and powerful to a loaf of bread. Sexual sin makes a person think they can play with fire, another proverb says.

Play with fire in your lap. Light your pants on fire. See how that goes. Not gonna turn out well for you.

Well, he leaves a pledge implied in the text. Clearly they have sex.

Tamar goes back home. Judah goes on to Timnah and eventually he sends his friend Hira with a goat to pay the cult prostitute.

Implication in the text is not that he did so primarily out of integrity as much as he needed his signet, his cord, and his staff back.

There's no cult prostitute in that area. Hira walks around trying to ask and find out and there isn't one.

And so rather than look foolish trying to pay back a prostitute, he cuts his losses. I want to suggest to you that it's not primarily in that culture.

We'll see something here in a second. It's not that primarily prostitution was an embarrassment in that culture as much as getting fooled by a prostitute would be embarrassing to him.

And so you drive, you know, walking all over the place going, where's my signet? You know, have you seen my signet? A prostitute has it.

They'd be like, you're a doofus, okay? That's dumb. Really? You have your signet and your, what are you doing?

So because the word cult prostitute occurs here and this is a unique word in verse 21, the use of that word, by the use of that word, it becomes clear that what

Judah has done here is not culturally wrong. The people that he lived with, the culture he swam in, did not look down on prostitution.

It was a social construct. It was already there. Nobody in this immediate context would have looked down or would have looked unfavorably on what he has done.

And that just highlights how Judah has removed himself from the people of God and even as messed up as his family was, he has removed himself from the voices that would encourage him towards God.

Judah is out with the Canaanites living the life of the Canaanites. I want to suggest to you that we can quickly find ourselves outside of the community of God and take, you know, a couple mornings sleeping in and a little bit here and then

I'm gone on vacation and then pretty soon, a few months roll by and you just haven't had any, any, you know, valuable connection with God's people.

And you're slipping and you're going away. Well, about three months later in the text,

Tamar is, Tamar begins to look a bit pregnant and not being married, she must have been immoral is the assumption and so immediately her father -in -law casts judgment.

She is to be brought out and burned for her sin. The text oozes with irony and hypocrisy and we get to see the inner workings of that.

We get to see that behind the scenes because we know what the people in the story don't know. We know who the baby daddy is.

And as she is being brought out, she holds out the staff, the cord and the signet and suggests that you want to establish paternity?

Let's establish paternity based on these three objects. This is the guy. Snap, right?

I mean, for real, like, oh snap, dude is busted big time. I mean, can you imagine how shamed he was in his family context?

What do you say to that? Whoa, mind blown. This is possibly the most twisted family scenario in all of scripture, right?

Judah's, let me recap for you. Judah's sons both die from wickedness. So Judah refuses to give his youngest and marriage to Tamar for fear that they're going to die too.

So she plays the part of a prostitute and Judah sleeps with his daughter -in -law thinking he's sleeping with just a routine prostitute.

I just thought she was a prostitute. But when she is found to be pregnant and being brought out to be burned alive, she reveals that her father -in -law is the baby daddy.

That is made for Springer, right? I mean, Springer is like, can I sign these guys on? I mean, when can we get them on the show?

This is like better than my current material. Can we get them on this role? Is Springer still on?

Am I like, I'm dating myself by even mentioning Springer, right? Nobody knows, good, good. I'm glad you don't even know if it's on still.

That's good. Somebody in the back is like, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Judah, Judah in the text says this.

I love this statement. I love it, his response. She's more righteous than me.

Like, duh, like, and that's not saying much, right?

That's not saying much, Judah. You haven't really emphasized anything that's good about her because to say she's more righteous than you, like most people are more righteous than you,

Judah. But here Judah does take a step in the right direction. He owns his own sin against his family.

He says, I did not provide for you a husband. I can understand why you have done this to me because I did not care for you.

I did not fulfill my obligation to you as a father -in -law to care for you and to provide for you the husband that was right for you.

And in this, Judah acknowledges his own hypocrisy. Has he been a hypocrite? He's ready to burn her at the stake.

For something that he himself did. So the line of Judah literally does not come through the daughter of Shua, but through Tamar, and she gives birth to twins.

Perez and Tara, you see kind of the weird circumstances surrounding that labor and delivery. And God, once again, selects the one who looks like he's going to be in second place.

God seems to have something for, and I say this is something for second born children.

Any of you second born children out there? Shout out. He just seems to in the text. I don't think that's literal, but he does.

Oftentimes, he takes that one that looks like they're going to be in second place. And Perez, Perez, how many of you?

You knew that name before this morning. You were like, yeah, I know Perez. Perez, yeah, he's my favorite Bible character.

Nah, not so much. But Perez actually occurs and shows up in Matthew chapter one.

He makes it over to the New Testament. One of the few characters from the Old Testament that actually is mentioned by name in the

New Testament, in Matthew one, in the genealogy of Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus Christ comes through this mess. His, his descendancy comes through this mess.

If you wanted to boast or brag about your genealogy, would you mention that you had a mess like this in your history?

Would you? I think everybody here has something that if you go back far enough in your family history, if you're, if you spend enough time on Ancestry .com,

you will delete your account. You know what I'm talking about? You get back far enough and you're like, and some of us are living it right now.

Like you're just like, I don't ever have to touch Ancestry .com. We got a mess right now in my family. But are you getting what

I'm saying in that? It doesn't take long to get back and recognize that our families are jacked up.

There's all kinds of messes back there. You will find something and uncover something embarrassing. But this situation is not endorsed by God.

I want to clarify that. And this is not telling you how to live your life. But it is telling you how powerful

God is to use a situation like this for his glory. It's recorded so that we see accurately and honestly how much our sin complicates matters.

How the human heart throws hurdles in the way of God accomplishing what he wants to accomplish in us and through us.

We throw, we do a great job putting hurdles in God's way and he is faithful and powerful and glorious and majestic to overcome any hurdle thrown at him like this mess.

God keeps his plan rolling in the face of human wickedness. So let's wrap up this morning with four simple and short applications.

The first thing I want to encourage all of us to do from this text is to stay in community with God's people. Hold tightly to one another.

Stay in community. Judah strayed out from the people of God and his family suffered for it. I will never ask you to come to church for my benefit.

I certainly like to have a full house. But I want you to be connecting with God's people because I'm convinced that every single one of us will stray far from God without others watching out for us, caring for us, meeting us where we live.

Let me encourage you even towards a small group. I recognize that some of you here are connected in small groups but that's the primary way here at our church that we connect in authentic community.

I don't have any expectation that you're going to have deep heart level sin type accountability relationships just because you showed up here this morning.

Occasionally you might have a deeper conversation with somebody that goes beyond how beautiful the weather is or how the tigers are doing or something like that.

But you get what I'm saying. I mean, you need a smaller group for that and we've got the potential to start a couple more small groups so you can fill that out on the connection card and on the back there's just a place to check a box that says, yeah,

I'm interested. I want to know more about small groups. And Lynn and I are the ones who handle getting people plugged into small groups.

The second application is to steer far away, steer far wide of sexual sins.

Judah was compromised by the sexuality of his culture. And the fact of the matter is we live in a culture that's highly sexualized as well.

Would you guys agree with me on that? Do we live in a sexualized culture? Absolutely. From magazine covers that promise to improve your technique to internet porn, to a new, are you ready for this?

I mean, within the last two years, a new industry has developed. A multimillion dollar industry has sprung up over the last two years in pledging to guarantee secrecy of your affair.

So, I mean, you can get online and you can have an affair and there's a million dollar industry, multimillion dollar industry in developing affairs for people.

That's the kind of culture that we live in right now. We are a culture that worships sex. And that all seems well and good until the proverb comes true.

And the end of that proverb that I love goes like this. All at once he follows her, she wins him over.

All at once he follows her and as an ox goes to the slaughter or as a stag is caught fast until an arrow pierces its liver, as a bird rushes into a snare, that's a trap, he does not know that it will cost him his life.

Everything that really matters in life is in jeopardy when we engage in sexual sin.

Everything that we value, everything that we hold dear, everything that really matters is in jeopardy and moving us towards destruction.

Any amount of sexual sin is moving a person down a pathway to destruction.

That's true. So steer far and wide from sexual sin if you need help.

If you're sitting here and you're like, that statement is overwhelming to me. I don't know where to start.

Find somebody you trust. I know it might not be me, but I'd encourage you. I mean, I can help you find a counselor.

I can help you find somebody that you don't have to talk with me about it, but even if you just want to speak in general terms, I need some help. Let this be the start.

The third thing, beware of hypocrisy. Judah had no problem judging

Tamar and committing her to death for the sin that he had committed. Avoiding hypocrisy looks like starting off with being honest with ourselves and dealing with our own messes first.

Our own messes are to always be the focus of our war on sin. Should we be at war on sin? We should be at war with sin, always.

But so often, what the world sees is us at war with their sin. And what if the world were to see us taking seriously our sin and our messes and coming clean and getting freedom at the foot of the cross?

What if we weren't hypocrites, but what if we were actually working our tails off to fight in war against sin in our hearts and in our lives?

And lastly, the last thing, I love this about this text. When Jesus logs into Ancestry .com,

this is the mess that he finds. When he logs in and he goes back and he starts looking through the documentation and he pays a little fee and gets all this stuff together, he finds this mess.

And I rejoice that God sent the blessing to mankind into our sin -cursed world through Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through Judah, through Perez, and on down the genealogy goes all the way to Mary.

And he did so to provide a way for us to be reconciled to him. So let's come to communion this morning to remember the amazing sacrifice of the

Son of God. He was born into the midst of sinful humanity to be the sacrifice our sins required.

He is the hope for forgiveness because deep down we all know that what I have asked of us in these applications so far are an impossible task.

I've literally thrown down something and I've said, here, try this. And it's impossible for us to stay in community when everything in our hearts calls for autonomy and self -centeredness is a supernatural calling.

I'm not calling you to pull yourself up by the bootstraps to just engage in community. I can't do that. I have to call you to a supernatural calling of what you open yourself up to God to do in your heart and life.

To call us to avoid sexual sin when our passions and our lusts wage war with the spirit inside is a supernatural calling.

To call hypocrites to throw off their hypocrisy is a supernatural calling. And the only hope we have is based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

He has purchased us with His blood. He has been punished in His body for the sins that we should have been punished for.

And our only hope this week is that from a place of forgiveness we can walk with His people.

We can say no to sexual sin and we can honestly and humbly deal with our own sins first.

Let's pray. Father, I thank You for Your grace.

I thank You that You give us these examples in Scripture. And as tough and as messed up as this passage was,

I see Your grace in the way that You can work through human sinfulness. And it gives me hope because I see the messes that I made in my own life and the crud that at times has owned me and has stuck to me.

And Father, the hypocrisy that I've had to wrestle through in my own heart and yet You have provided a way through Judah, this messed up man, and through his offspring,

Perez, the result of his mess, ultimately leading us to Jesus Christ, the one who reconciles us to a right relationship with You.

Father, we have sinned. We have broken Your laws. We have gone our own way. But You have given us a glorious, beautiful opportunity to accept

Your sacrifice. Father, I pray as we come to communion that You would be pleased with our offering to You, that You would be pleased to bring to mind those areas of sin that we need to deal with in our own hearts, and that we would, with unity in community, take this bread and this juice to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.