Recognizing Our Own Sins

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If you have your Bibles, turn to the book of Genesis.
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Today we're going to be in Genesis 38.
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We've been in Genesis now for quite a while going verse by verse and we've started to move more chapter by chapter as we come to some of the later chapters which are longer narratives.
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So the goal today is to get through this chapter.
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It's 30 verses, so I think we can do that.
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Before we read, I'd like to make just a few introductory remarks.
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A couple weeks ago I came across a video of a man who was giving a TED Talk.
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If you're not familiar with TED Talks, they are opportunities for people who have expertise in certain areas to come and talk about their particular, wherever they're from or whatever they do.
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And the man on the video was a former writer for a television program, The American Bible Challenge with Jeff Foxworthy, which was a quiz show that gave Bible questions.
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And this man began to explain how on that quiz show they had to redact much of what the Bible has to say because as he said, there are many stories that were not fit for television and they were not fit for children's ears.
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And I actually did a little something on my program this week on a conversation with a Calvinist because he went on to say he thought parts of the Bible weren't true and I deal with that in the show.
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But I want to say one thing I do agree with.
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He's right about one thing.
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If you try to whitewash the Bible of all its offensive stories, you're not left with much because the Bible is filled with difficult stories that are hard to explain in polite conversation.
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It includes all of the sordid details.
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It does not attempt to hide them in the narrative.
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And we know this, we've already seen this in Genesis.
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We've seen drunkenness, we've seen rape, we've seen incest, we've seen murder.
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Just a few weeks ago, we saw a whole town of people who were forced into circumcision just for the purpose of making them weak so that they could be slaughtered.
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The Bible does not present the world with rose-colored glasses.
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But if we are ones who say we believe the Bible, the whole Bible, then we should know what it says even in the hard parts, even in the sordid details.
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And so today we're going to read this chapter and it does talk about some things that may encourage interesting conversations with the kids on the ride home.
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I will do my best not to be too elaborate, but dads, prepare yourselves, it may create a question or two.
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Let's stand.
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Let's read.
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It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite whose name was Hira.
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There Judah saw a certain daughter of a Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he took her and went into her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Ur.
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She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan.
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Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah.
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Judah was in Chezeb when she bore him.
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And Judah took a wife for Ur from his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
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But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.
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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.
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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.
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And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.
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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 brother.
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So Tamar went and remained in her father's house.
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In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shewa's daughter, died, and when Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheep shearers, he and his friend Hira the Adulamite.
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And when Tamar was told, Your father-in-law is going 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 Enam, which is on the road to Timnah.
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For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage.
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When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.
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He turned to her at the roadside, and said, Come, let me come into you.
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For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
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She said, What will you give me, that you may come into me? He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock.
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And she said, If you give me a pledge until you send it.
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He said, What pledge shall I give you? She replied, Your signet, and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.
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So he gave them to her, and went into her, and she conceived by him.
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Then she arose and went away, taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood.
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Then Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adulamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand.
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He did not find her.
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And he asked the men of the place, Where is the cult prostitute who was at Enaim at the roadside? And they said, No cult prostitute has been here.
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So he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her.
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Also the men of the place said, No cult prostitute has been here.
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And Judah replied, Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at.
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You see, I sent the young goat, and you did not find her.
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About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has been immoral.
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Tomorrow, she, or excuse me, moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.
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And Judah said, Bring her out, and let her be burned.
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As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.
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And she said, Please identify whose these are, the signet, the cord, and the staff.
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When Judah identified them, then Judah identified them and said, She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her my son Sheleh, and he did not know her again.
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Then 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 the hand, saying, This one came out first.
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But he drew back his hand, and, behold, his brother came out.
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And she said, What a breach you have made for yourself! Therefore his name was called Perez.
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Afterward, his brother came out with the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was Zerah.
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May we pray.
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Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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Lord, as we open the word together and seek to understand what it says, I pray first and foremost that, Lord, you keep me from error.
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I pray also, Lord, that you would give us an attentive heart, an attentive ear, and, Lord, that the Spirit of God would take the Word of God past the ear, past even the mind, and to the very heart, and apply these truths to our heart today.
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And I pray, Lord, if there are those here who do not know Christ, whether they be young or old, whether they be man or woman, Lord, whether they be church member or not, Lord, if there are those here who do not know Christ, Lord, that they would see today in the example of Judah, one who recognized his sin, and, Lord, let us recognize our sin and turn from our sin to the living God.
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We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Today we find ourselves following the narrative of Judah, and this may seem somewhat odd, because as we noticed last week, the narrative seemed to be fixed completely on the person of Joseph.
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Joseph was the one who had the dreams.
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Joseph was the one who brought the anger of his brothers.
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Joseph was the one who was cast into the pit and then ultimately sold into slavery.
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And if you end the last verse of chapter 37 and go right into the first verse of chapter 39, it would seem as if this chapter is almost an inappropriate aside, like it's sort of stuck in there in a way that was somewhat unintentional, but that's not the case.
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This story is right where it is supposed to be.
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This narrative is explaining something to us that we have to understand was happening behind the scenes, because it is true that the primary narrative of what we're going to read over the next several chapters is about Joseph and him saving his family and many others from the famine that will come, and that's the primary narrative that we're going to read, but there is an underlying, and I might even add an even more important narrative that's happening behind the scenes, and that is in the life of Judah.
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And I want you to think about time, because this is an important truth.
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We think sometimes that when we read one story in the Bible, the other story that we were reading sort of just stops, and we forget that time stands still for no one, time waits for no man, and therefore when one story is going, the other story is also going.
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And so chapter 38, which we just read, actually takes us all the way to the point where Judah is about to find out that his brother is still alive, he's the second to Pharaoh, and he's about to meet with his brother again, because think about this from a timetable perspective.
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Last time we saw Joseph, he was 17.
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The next time we read of his age is actually in chapter 41, and he's 30 years old.
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And I'm not great at math, but I know that 30 minus 17 is 13, I think, and then how many years of famine are there? I'm sorry, how many years of plenty? Seven years of plenty, seven years of bad, right? So 13 plus 7 is 20.
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So from the time Joseph is sold into slavery at about the age of 17, to the time that he's risen up as the leader in Egypt, there's 13 years, and then there's seven years of plenty, which becomes 20 years.
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Now take a step back.
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When Judah leaves his family and goes to Canaan and finds a wife and begins to sire children, those children grow up to a marriageable age, which would have been around 20 years old.
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So the same time period as Ur and Onan and Shelah are growing up, that's when Joseph is in Egypt, rising to the point of power and starting to stock those barns with those crops for the seven years of lean.
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So understand, this is a concurrent story.
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Everything that's happening in 38 is happening concurrently with everything that's happening in Joseph's life that we're going to begin reading in chapter 39 and following.
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Does that make sense? So understand, this is the behind the scenes.
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We're getting a glimpse at what's going on in the life of the one who would be the ancestor of David, and ultimately the ancestor of Christ.
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Understand, Judah is given a position of preeminence among his brothers.
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His father will say to him, the scepter shall not depart from you, meaning that one day kings would arise from him.
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And we know King David, the most notable of the Old Testament kings, and of course the Lord Jesus Christ, the most notable king of all, would come from David.
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We read this morning in Revelation, I was listening as Brother Mike read, and Jesus mentions in Revelation, I am the descendant of David, of the tribe of Judah.
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Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah.
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So this story is hugely significant, so it's not an aside, it's not an unintentional interruption, it's the side or back story of what's going on, and we're going to find where it comes together when Judah is going to offer himself, in a sense, like a sacrifice, and we'll see that later in the Genesis narrative.
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Alright, so with that in our mind, with that sort of as the introduction, let's look at the outline of today's lesson.
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You can see it on the screen.
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This is the outline as I have written it, and the way that I did this outline, there's three references to time in this chapter.
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Verse 1 says at that time, verse 12 says in the course of time, and then verse 27 says when the time came.
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So three references to the idea of time come up, and I think that each one of those is distinguishing for us a point in this chapter that really separates it out and outlines it for us quite well.
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And here's the outline.
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The first 11 verses, Judah is going to gain three sons, and then he's going to lose two to wickedness.
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Then he is going to be, from verses 12 to 26, he's going to be tricked and rebuked by his daughter-in-law, Tamar.
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And then finally, in the last few verses, verses 27 to 30, he is going to receive two additional sons, one of which will be the ancestor of David.
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Alright, so let's begin.
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In the first point here, Judah gains three sons and loses two to wickedness.
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It says, chapter 38, verse 1, it says it happened at that time that Judah went down with his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira, and I know that this is probably not meaningful to you all, but there's a place in Georgia called Hay-Hira, Georgia.
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And if you've ever heard Ray Stevens, the singer, he often sung about Hay-Hira, Georgia.
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So all week long, I've imagined old Judah going to the Adulamite and saying, hey Hira, I don't know why, it's just in my mind.
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And so I'm not sure if Hira is the way that you're supposed to say it.
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I heard a Hebrew scholar this week read it, he said Hira, and maybe that's the way it should be said.
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But I'm pretty sure I'm going to say Hira from now on, just because of that.
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But he meets this friend named Hira, and there Judah saw a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shu.
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Now her name is never given to us, just the name of her father.
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And it says he went and took her and went into her.
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Now it doesn't say he married her, but the phrase took her is a euphemism for marriage, and later in verse 6 it says they were married.
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So it's not as if he just went and just laid with her without any intentions.
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He saw her, he desired her, he took her, and the idea of the euphemism there is he married her and he laid with her.
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And as a result, verse 3, she conceived and she bore a son, and his name was called Ur.
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And then she bore another son whose name was Onan, and then she bore another son, Shelah.
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Could be Shelah, could be pronounced a different way, when I think of Shelah I think of the Australian for lady, so I've tried to avoid using Shelah, just Shelah would be fine.
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And it says she bore Shelah and he was in Chezeb when she bore him, and Judah took a wife for Ur whose name was Tamar.
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So here he's got three sons, he has a daughter-in-law, and all of them essentially are Canaanites.
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That's an important point.
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They're of Judah, but they're taken from that surrounding area.
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He goes into Canaan, he makes a best friend of Hira, and we're going to see this guy come up a couple of times in the story.
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This guy seems to be his buddy, his confidant, his friend.
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He's going to send him with the payment for the prostitute later, he's going to send Hira to make the payment, so this guy is somewhat important in his life, and this guy is a Canaanite.
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It's interesting that he leaves his brothers and sort of adopts the Canaanite life.
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He adopts a Canaanite friend, takes a Canaanite wife, and has three sons that are all half Canaanite.
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So it's interesting that Judah has sort of gone away from the family, and the text doesn't tell us why.
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We could conjecture some thoughts as to why he went away.
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One of the thoughts I had this week was perhaps he went away because his father was continually grieving Joseph, and he knew of his part that he had played in his brothers' selling into slavery, and he was not wanting to continue to feel the grief and the burden and the sin and the shame of what he did, so he went away so he could get away from the grieving father.
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Now the text doesn't say that, that's just an idea of why.
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We don't know why.
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One of the things that the Hebrew scholars do mention in this though, is you'll notice in the text it says that he went down.
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Now I don't put a lot of stock into these allegorical analogies, but there are times where the Bible indicates going down and going up as not only a physical, but also a spiritual condition.
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Like there are times, you'll notice, especially in the New Testament, anytime you're going to Jerusalem, you're always going up.
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Always going up to Jerusalem.
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No matter where you're coming from, Jerusalem is always considered up because it's a positive.
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You're going upward.
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It's a good thing to go to Jerusalem, but you're always going down to Egypt.
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Nobody goes up to Egypt, nobody goes down to Jerusalem.
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You always go up to Jerusalem, you always go down to Egypt because one represented the idea of spiritual goodness, one represented the spiritual wickedness, and so you're always going up to Egypt, you're always going down to, or rather, strike that, reverse it, you're always going up to Jerusalem, always going down to Egypt.
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But the idea here, at least some of the rabbis have said, the idea of him going down, and the idea that it states it just that way, and that he turned aside, is the idea that he's sort of going away from his family and adopting a culture which is opposed to his family.
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And we know that he does because one of the things that he does is he takes a wife from the culture that his previous ancestors had forbidden.
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Remember Abraham, when he sought a wife for Isaac, he said, do not take a wife from the Canaanites.
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And later, when Isaac sought a wife for, not Esau, because Esau had already taken a pair of Canaanite wives, but when he sought a wife for Jacob, he said, don't take from the Canaanites, but go and get from our family.
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Don't take from these wicked Canaanite women.
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So Judah has to know this.
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This has to be a thing that's well known within their family, that you don't take a wife from the Canaanites.
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But instead, he does that.
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He goes away from his brothers.
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He goes away from his family.
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He goes into the Canaanite land, and he takes for himself a wife, a best friend, and sires children all in this land.
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And so this is the condition, in a sense, bearing the condition of his physicality is in a sense showing the condition of his spirit.
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Now, verse 7, it says, But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.
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Interesting.
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We have seen God take people's lives in previous chapters.
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We saw God destroy every man, woman, and child during Noah's flood, except for Noah and the family.
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We saw God destroy everyone in Sodom, except for Lot and his two daughters.
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But this is the first time in the Genesis text that there is an individual capital punishment where it says God intervened in the life of someone who was wicked, and because of his wickedness, took his life specifically.
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So, what causes the big question, especially for me, because again, I swim in the text all week thinking about these things, I'm like, what did he do? Because it doesn't say.
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It just says he was wicked.
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It doesn't say what he did.
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But he was so wicked that God took his life.
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So Judah now is left with a problem.
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He has a widowed daughter-in-law, and he's got two unmarried sons.
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And so Judah goes to his second son, whose name was Onan, and he says, listen, there is a custom, and the custom would actually later be codified in the law, but understand the law is not written at this point, so this isn't coming from Mosaic law because Moses hasn't been born yet.
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But the custom was that if a man died, then his widow would become the wife of his second brother, the next one down the line, and that that brother would be responsible for raising up children on behalf of the one who died.
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Understand that he's not raising up children for himself.
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He's raising up children for the one who died.
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So Onan is basically given a command from his father, you're going to go, you're going to take Tamar, you're going to have intercourse with her, and you're going to produce children who will bear the lineage of your brother.
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And Onan engages in what is in the Latin referred to as coitus interruptus.
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I'll let you do with that what you want.
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But basically it was the earliest and only form of birth control that existed at that time.
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He didn't want to give a child to Tamar.
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And you've got to say, why? Why didn't he want to give a child to Tamar? It tells us actually in the text, it says in verse 9, it says, but Onan knew that the offspring would not be his.
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That's why.
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Onan did what he did because he did not want to give a child to his brother.
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And you say, well why not? Was he selfish? Well we don't know his motivations specifically, but we can conjecture this, if his brother had an heir, his brother was the first born, therefore the heir of his brother would take the place of the first born, therefore receiving the greatest inheritance.
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The older brother has died, I'm now the eldest brother, I'm in line for the position of the highest point of the inheritance.
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If I give my brother a child, that child is going to take my place.
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That child is going to become the one who takes my inheritance.
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I don't want to give up my portion of the inheritance, so I'm not going to give a child to my brother.
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Now I want to give a quick aside, we talk about Onan.
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There is actually, later in the English language, a term called Onanism.
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Maybe you've heard it, maybe you haven't.
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But Onanism has been used as a broad term to describe any misuse of the male seed, even going as far as applying it to birth control and self-gratification and things like that.
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However the key here is not that.
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The key is that he did not want to bear a son for his brother.
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The sin was not necessarily the coitus interruptus, the sin was the lack of willingness to do what was demanded, which was to give a son to his brother.
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Now, we can talk another day about the Onanism and how it's discussed today.
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Not for this conversation, not for this group.
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But you understand though, often times we apply, we take application from something that isn't intended to be applied here.
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People would say this is an example of why this is sinful or that's sinful.
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What the sin is here is the unwillingness to give a son to his brother.
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Because that was what was demanded of him.
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And notice what the text says.
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It says, and what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death.
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That's two! The first brother, he was evil, we don't know how, but he was so evil he got snuffed out.
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Boom.
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This guy, we know exactly what he did, unwilling to give a son to the wicked brother, and he gets killed.
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So now Judah has a problem.
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I've only got one more.
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And so Judah somehow assumes that perhaps Tamar is the problem.
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My first son was with Tamar, he died.
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My second son was with Tamar, he died.
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I've only got one more, and according to the law and the custom, she should be his, but I don't want her to be his.
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Because she is damaged goods, she is very, I'm scared to death.
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Every one of my other sons was with her and died.
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So in a sense, he takes somewhat of a superstitious approach and says, I think you're dangerous.
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Now he doesn't say that, but it says it in the text, it says here, it says, let me see.
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Verse 11, it says, then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till Shelem, my son, grows up.
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Next line says, for he feared that he would die like his brothers.
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He doesn't want him to be with her because he's afraid that somehow she is tainted.
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Somehow she is dangerous.
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Somehow she's the one who's brought the hex on them all.
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So he sends her home to her father to live the life of a widow, which is a very difficult life.
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So now Judah is tricked and rebuked by Tamar.
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This is verses 12 to 26, and we're going to go a little quicker through this portion because it's longer.
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But it says, in the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shewa's daughter, died.
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Now by the way, that's the third person in this chapter to die.
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And it's interesting that, and this again, going back to some of what the rabbis have said about this particular chapter, have said, all of the other deaths are somehow tied to a specific sin.
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Ur sinned and died, Onan sinned and died.
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This woman's not mentioned to sin in a specific way, but her death is mentioned.
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And some rabbis say, well, the idea here is it's tying it to the sin of Judah, because what is Judah doing? He's holding back Shewa from Tamar.
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He's the one engaging in a sin, and as a result, loses his wife.
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Now the text doesn't say that, somewhat conjecture, so you have to be careful making too much of a point of that.
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But it is interesting, three deaths are mentioned, two specifically tied to sin, and then here she is tied to Judah, who himself is engaging in sin by holding back Shewa from his son.
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And when Judah was comforted, that means when he had gone through his time of grief, he went up to Timnah, to the sheep shears.
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Now the sheep shears, this was a time of celebration.
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This is sort of like an old world Mardi Gras, where everybody would come together and they would celebrate, and they would have the time of the shearing of the sheep.
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We saw this same thing happen with Laban just a few chapters ago, when Laban went to the sheep shears.
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That's when Jacob took his family and ran away, because he knew he'd be gone for a while.
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He knew that he would be preoccupied with the celebration of the sheep shearing.
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Well, this is sort of a similar thing, and so Judah and his buddy Hira are going to go enjoy the celebration of the shearing of the sheep.
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And when Tamar was told, verse 13, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear the sheep, she took off her widow's garments, and she covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Anahim, which is on the road to Timnah.
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For she saw that Shella was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage.
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See, she realized she'd been lied to.
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As Judah told her, when he's old enough you can have him, but he's old enough and she hadn't had him.
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So she realized she's been lied to.
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She realized she's going to be left a widow.
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She realizes she's basically in a position where she has no upward mobility, nowhere to go, and finds herself in somewhat of a desperate state.
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So verse 15, when Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she covered her face.
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Now some people make a big deal about that, saying the veil was the marker of a prostitute.
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However, there's a lot of disagreement among commentaries on this.
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Some say the veil was the mark of a prostitute.
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Some say the veil was actually the opposite of the mark of a prostitute, because prostitutes wanted to show their face.
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And so there's sort of an argument here as to whether or not, what we know the veil was for was to hide who she was.
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If she'd have went out there with an open face, she would have known.
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And it was apparently customary that cult prostitutes would sometimes wear veils.
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And so this is why later, when Hira mentions, I'm looking for the cult prostitute, then it indicates it's probably a connection to the fact that she was wearing the veil.
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Now something else to mention, and again, I know this is weird, but cult prostitution was actually a religious activity that was done in the pagan cultures, and this is something that actually went on, really, even until today.
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There are a lot of pagan religions that use intercourse as a spiritual exercise, as a way to sort of grow closer to God.
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When two people unite in that union of depravity, what they're doing is they're actually invoking the divine in that moment of intercourse.
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So, there were prostitutes who were paid to essentially allow men to have this spiritual moment of divine ecstasy with them, and that was their occupation.
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That was a lot of really fancy words for, we always have good excuses for doing wrong things, and that's all it is.
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They come up with a religious excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway, and that's to have a bunch of indiscriminate sex.
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And so, she dresses up in a way that he won't know who she is.
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When he saw her, he figures she's a prostitute, and he says, he turns to her on the roadside.
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By the way, same language as earlier, if you look in the Hebrew, the language here of turning, turning to her, this idea of when he went down from his family and turned aside, this is the same idea.
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Seeing the prostitute, again, somewhat of that spiritual condition, turning aside to the prostitute, and it says, he said, come, let me come into you.
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For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
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She said, what will you give me that you may come into me? He said, I'll send you a young goat from the flock.
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And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it.
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Basically, you got to make a down payment, because I don't trust you.
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And by the way, she doesn't know he's Tamar, or he doesn't know she's Tamar, but she really has no reason to trust him.
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But that's not the point in this.
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She's saying, I want something proof.
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I want some proof.
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So he gives her his signet, his cord, and his staff.
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Now, for a modern person, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
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A signet was a little tube that was kept for rolling into, making an impression into wax.
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And it was a way that a man of position would essentially sign his name.
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It was a way of indicating that a man had given his word, right? Like we have...
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In fact, the word signature, you know, the word signature comes from the word signet.
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A signet was a stamp.
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During the time of Christ, it was on a ring.
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Remember when the prodigal son comes back and says he puts a ring on his finger.
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It's possible that was the signet ring, the ring of the family's mark, that he was reestablishing him in that position as a son.
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So a signet was a way that you would indicate that you were giving your word.
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Well, some translations say signet ring here in Genesis 38, but it's probably not a ring because it's also tied to the idea of a cord.
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So what it was, it was probably a little metal tube that was held around a cord around the neck that he would take off, use, and put back around his neck.
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So she says, give me your signet, give me your cord, what it's attached to, and give me your staff.
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Now again, the staff was also probably very ornate, and it was probably a way of identification of who he was.
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It probably had markings on it that indicated that's Judah's staff.
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So you've got Judah's necklace with his signet, you've got Judah's staff with his markings.
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Basically, she said, I need your ID and your credit card.
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I need your ID and your social security number.
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Because if you don't pay, I'm going to have a promissory note with your signature.
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Now you've got to think for a moment.
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These are pretty important items, wouldn't you say? But Judah is given to this moment of lust.
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He desires to have this time of pleasure, so he's willing to give up anything.
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Oh, you just want my ID and credit card, sure, no problem.
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Men can be dumb, and this is a moment, or lack wisdom, this is a moment where he gives it to her.
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And of course, we'll see later that that was her plan all along.
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She wanted to be able to prove what had happened.
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So after it's over, the incident has taken place.
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She takes his signet, his cord, and his staff, and she arose and went away, verse 19 says.
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She took off the veil, and she put back on the garments of her widowhood.
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And when Judah finished up with the sheep shearing, he sent his friend Hira back to the place to pay her, because he wants to get it back.
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He wants to get the signet, he wants to get the cord, he wants to get the staff back.
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And so he sends Hira with the goat.
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And you've got to imagine this guy, he's just carrying a goat, looking for a prostitute just to give it to her so he can get the security deposit back.
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And he goes into town and he says, where's the cult prostitute? And they seem indignant.
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There is no cult prostitute here.
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And uh-oh, she's gone.
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And she's got my ID.
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So he comes back home to Judah and he says, look man, I went and looked for her, asked around, they said there's no cult prostitute there, what do you want to do? And Judah says, let her keep it.
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Verse 23, it says, let her keep these things as her own, or we shall be laughed at.
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You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her.
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Now what does it mean to be laughed at? The idea here is the idea of mocked.
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And it's also the idea of shame.
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Because he knows what he has done, even in this time, is not something that was culturally allotted, it was still something that had a taint of shame.
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This is why when Hira goes back to the city saying, where's the prostitute? There's no prostitute here.
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And so Judah knows if they keep looking for this woman, if they go from town to town looking for a prostitute, they're going to incur somewhat of a bad name for themselves, and they're going to bring shame and mockery on themselves.
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And so he says, just let her have it, just let her have it.
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She can have the signet, she can have the cord, she can have the staff.
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And in that sense, it was gone.
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And to him, the matter was over.
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Matter was settled.
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He tried to pay, she wasn't there to take the payment.
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Story's over, as far as he's concerned.
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Now we get to verse 24.
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About three months later, what happens after three months? You start to show.
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The belly begins to get a little bigger, and people say, ah, you got a bun in the oven, right? You got a little belly.
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Well, about three months later, first trimester, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law has been immoral.
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Just for a moment.
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Think on that.
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She weren't the only one.
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Because he participated too.
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Now he doesn't know yet that he's the participating party, but he's about to throw out a hammer of judgment on this woman for her indiscretion, when he is just as guilty as she is.
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How easily is it for us to do that? Someone else sins, and we want the hammer of justice to fall upon them, but when we sin, what do we want? Mercy, mercy, mercy.
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What do people say, oh, I sinned, but God will forgive me.
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You sin, I'm going to drop the hammer of judgment upon you.
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And so we see that here, it says, and Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned.
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Now you've got to think from Judah's perspective, though, this is probably, to him, a happy day, because now the problem is over.
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Remember, from his perspective, he's still got a problem.
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He's got Shelah, the youngest son, who he doesn't want to give to Tamar, and so in his mind, he's saying, if we burn her, I can get another wife for Shelah, he can provide children, and we can have a line through him, and it's all over.
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So he might have some ulterior motives here.
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As she was brought out, verse 25, she sent word to her father-in-law, by the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.
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And she said, please identify these, who these are, the signet, the cord, and the staff.
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By the way, the word identify there should at least stand out for a second, because that word identify is the same exact word used in the last chapter, when the brothers of Joseph came with the coat that was covered in the blood of the, remember, they had killed the goat and dipped it in the blood, and they came to their father and handed it to the father and said, identify this, identify, and they knew whose coat it was, but they said, father, identify this, and he said, that's my son, he's been torn to pieces.
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Right? Now the same thing is happening to Judah, he's there, he's commanded that she be drug out and burned, and she says, well, take these to him, that he might identify them.
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So they go and they laid at Judah and said, your daughter-in-law said, she has been impregnated by the man who owns these.
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And he looks down, and it's his signet, and his cord, and his staff.
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Verse 26, then Judah identified them and said, key passage right here, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.
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See, he recognizes, not, he doesn't even, at this point, he's not even pointing to the fact that he went with her as a prostitute, he's recognizing that the entire event happened because he did not own up to his responsibility to give Shelah to her.
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And therefore, he calls her righteous, more righteous than him.
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In fact, in the Hebrew, it's actually very, very specific.
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The term here is, she is righteous, not I.
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She is righteous, not I.
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So we have a recognition of sin, and this becomes a major turning point in the life of Judah.
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I think of this similar to the story of David, when David had sinned with Bathsheba, and you remember the prophet Nathan comes in and he says, I've got a story to tell you, there's a man, he had a lamb, and another rich man took the poor man's lamb and took her for himself, and what do you think should be done to that man? Bring him here and I'll punish him.
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And that little crooked finger of that prophet said, thou art the man, right? Same thing.
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Tamar has laid at the feet of Judah the evidence of his guilt, and essentially said, thou art the man.
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And he says, she is righteous, not I.
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Now, the text says he did not know her again.
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There's a lot that could be said about that.
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Some say that's an expression of genuine repentance, because he didn't take her as a wife, but rather allowed her to bear children on behalf of his son, because that's what was supposed to have happened all along.
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But in a sense, it does show he didn't have the desire for her anymore in that conjugal way, but rather she became the mother of his children, and apparently he continued to take care of her in that regard, but not in a romantic way.
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Then we get to the third point, and this one will be very short, but it's, he gains two sons from this affair.
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Chapter 38, verse 27, it says, when the time of her labor came, by the way, this story is wild too, there were twins in her womb, pretty common story in the Bible, a lot of twins coming up, and the twins in her womb, when she was in labor, one put out his hand.
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Now, I've been in the labor delivery room, this is the oddest thing I could imagine, but apparently the baby stuck his hand out, and in an attempt by the midwife, who must have been just the sharpest midwife ever, she's like, well, we need to know he was first, and apparently she had a scarlet thread just sitting there, so she grabs it and wraps it around his wrist, ties it to his wrist, and then as soon as his hand, right back in, and then another few minutes go by, and the first child comes out, there's no scarlet thread, did it come off? No.
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The other child had somehow bypassed the hand one, and so they name him Perez.
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Perez means to breach, or to make a path, and he becomes, in that sense, the first born.
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But really, it was Zerah who had stuck his hand out and made himself known first.
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Now, you may say, what in the world does this story have to do with anything? Well, this story is actually very interesting when you begin to step back and look at it in the grand narrative of scripture, because first of all, these twins, in a sense, sort of parallel Jacob and Esau, because when we look at the story of Jacob and Esau, Zerah's hand came out first, but it was Perez who actually was the first to come out, and so there was a reversal there.
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Same thing when we look back at Jacob and Esau, Esau was the first born, but Jacob is the one to receive the blessing, so there's a reversal there.
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The scarlet thread, and if you look back, what does Edom mean? It means red.
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There's all these little connections that we see, but the most important connection is not from what came before.
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The most important connection is from what would come later.
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And I want to show you a couple of things very quickly.
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If you would, in your Bibles, turn over to the book of Ruth, and turn to Ruth chapter 4.
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We're going to go to verse 18.
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Notice in verse 18, the first name that's mentioned.
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It says, now these are the generations of who? Of Perez.
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Who is Perez? Perez is the son of Judah through Tamar.
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So this young child that we just read about in chapter 38, becomes important in the genealogy in the life of Ruth, because it says Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram, Amminadab, Amminadab's nation, nation Salmon, Salmon, Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered who? David.
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So we see the connection between Judah and David is through Perez, the son of Tamar.
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Now turn again, if you would, over to Matthew chapter 1.
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Matthew chapter 1.
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We're going to go to a New Testament passage and show how the Bible fits together.
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The grand narrative of scripture fits together.
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Just go to chapter 1 verse 1.
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The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
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Abraham was the father of Isaac.
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Isaac was the father of Jacob.
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Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.
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And Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.
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And Perez the father of Hezron, the father of Ram.
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Please focus, listen to this.
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Because this is where it's going to come together.
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And this is not the time to be looking around.
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This is the time to be listening.
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This is what this story is all about.
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Judah is the ancestor of David, who is the ancestor of Christ.
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And the ancestry goes through Tamar, who is only one of four women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ.
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And every one of those women has a story and a background that you would not expect.
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Tamar pretended to be a prostitute to engage with her father-in-law to give birth to a son.
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That son is in the line of Christ.
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The next one is Ruth, a Moabitess.
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No, I'm sorry, the next one is not Ruth.
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Who is it? It's Rahab.
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I'm sorry, Rahab, a prostitute and a Canaanite.
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And then Ruth, a Moabitess.
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And then Bathsheba, a Canaanite.
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And then you notice her name is not even mentioned.
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She's called the wife of Uriah.
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Four women other than Mary, four women are in the line of Christ.
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All four women have stories that in a sense are either sorted or outside of the covenant of Israel, as in the situation with Ruth.
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But all four of those women are redeemed and brought into the family of God by God's grace and used in His plan to bring about His Son, Jesus Christ.
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You got trouble in your family? You wonder sometimes if God can use someone like you? Look at the kind of people He did use.
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Look at the kind of people that He did put in the line of Christ.
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I started this sermon by talking about the sorted details of Scripture.
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But understand, all of human history is sorted.
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If God didn't use broken people, He wouldn't have any to choose from because we are all broken and we are all in need of redemption.
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And therefore, we come back to Judah and we'll close with him.
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Judah realized his sin when his guilty evidence was placed at his feet.
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And I've wrestled with this question all week and I want you to think about this question as I close.
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What would it take to be laid at your feet for you to recognize your sin and your need of repentance? Maybe it's your internet search history.
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Maybe it's your credit score.
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Maybe it's your driving record.
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Or maybe it's just if we took a picture of all the thoughts you've had this week and projected them on a screen, it would be enough for you to say, you know what, I have sinned against man and I've sinned even more against God and I need Jesus Christ.
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Because that's the point.
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The point is that our shame should not cause us to look down.
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Our shame should cause us to look up.
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Our brokenness should not leave us broken but cause us to look to the only one who can heal us in our brokenness.
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No one here is without sin.
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Everyone here needs Christ.
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We are all like Judah.
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And we all need to say, I am not righteous.
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He is my righteousness.
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If you came here today trusting in anything else other than Jesus, if you came trusting in yourself, in your religious activities, in your giving, in your goodness, understand this, on the day of judgment that will all be washed away.
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It will all be not enough.
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The only thing that will stand on judgment day is Jesus Christ and his righteousness alone.
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Trust in him, not in yourself.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you Lord for passages like this that remind us that you use broken people and Lord you call broken people to you.
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And Lord I pray that anyone in here today who doesn't know you that they would fall on their knees at the foot of the cross and they would be reminded of that great hymn that says, nothing in my hands I bring, only to the cross I cling.
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Naked come to thee for dress.
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Lord help us to come to Christ to be dressed in his righteousness.
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Alone.
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In his name.
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Amen.