Genesis #41 - Joseph #2 - "In Preserving His Promises through Dark Times" (Gen 38)

For now, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, take it and turn with me to Genesis chapter 38. Genesis chapter 38, hopefully you're there by now. Genesis 38, and if you have one of the red Bibles that we give away, that's on page 33.

Page 33, Genesis chapter 38, and we're going to read just the first four verses. We'll actually look at the whole chapter this morning, but just to get started, the first four verses. So Genesis chapter 38 and verses one to four.

Genesis 38 and verses one to four. If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me? We do this at this point in our service because we want to honor the Word of God, even with the posture of our bodies as we come to it.

And so Genesis and chapter 34, beginning in verse 38, excuse me, and beginning with verse one. Genesis chapter 38, beginning with verse one. God's Word says to us, at this time Judah left his brothers and settled near a Dolomite named Hira.

There Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua. He took her as a wife and slept with her. She conceived and gave birth to a son and he named him Ur. She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and named him Onan.

She gave birth to another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezim that she gave birth to him. Pray that God will bless that reading of His Word, give us understanding of it. Let me pray, ask for God's help, and we will get to work in the Bible this morning.

Let's pray. Well Heavenly Father, we ask that as we look at Your Word this morning, we pray that Your Spirit would be at work helping us to hear Your Word, to understand it, and to apply it to our lives.

We ask that as we look at this portion of Your Word that we would be strengthened, we would be challenged, we would be equipped, we would ultimately be built up in our faith because of what we have heard this morning.

Pray for Your people who are here. Pray for myself as I preach that there would be a work of Your Spirit in both speaker and hearer this morning. Father, as I happen to pray for other area churches this morning, take a moment to pray for Heritage Christian Fellowship over in Medford.

Thank you for Pastor Paul and Pastor Jeremy and the team who give leadership there. Pray for them this morning as they begin a new sermon series in the book of First Peter, what a wonderful book that is.

Pray that You would use that book in the life of that church to make disciples, to bring people to faith, to equip men and women, boys and girls, for the works of service that You've called them to. Be with them the next 14 weeks as they spend that time in that wonderful letter, and be with us even now as we open up Your Word.

We ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. This morning I want to speak to you from the subject in our sermon series, Joseph the Hidden Hand of God. I want to speak to you on the subject of the hidden hand of God in preserving His promises through dark times.

Preserving His promises through dark times. Does God keep His promises even when things look bleak? Before you hit me, you kind of jumped to an answer. I want you to take a moment and think about that question with me.

Does God keep His promises even when things look bleak? No doubt, if you've been walking with Jesus for any length of time, if you've been walking with Jesus long enough, you have felt the weight of that question at some point.

I know, just speak from personal experience, I know I have felt it. I still feel it on some days. The question of whether God can be trusted even when things look very dark and very bleak, that question I think sits at the heart of the chapter that we're going to spend our time in this morning as we come back to the book of Genesis.

As I said, we are in a sermon series that we have entitled Joseph the Hidden Hand of God, and we've given it that title because what we're seeing in the life of Joseph, and we will see in future weeks, is that though at times it seems as though God is absent from proceedings and that God is not present when things are going wrong, actually He is very present.

That though you don't see His hand, His hand is indeed at work. And we're going to see that this morning as we come to this passage in Genesis chapter 38. Like I said a few moments ago, parts of this message will get pretty rough because the content of the chapter gets pretty rough.

That might make some people uncomfortable, might make some people unhappy, but for a moment, can we just, before we even get into this chapter, I want you to think with me for a moment, this might seem a little weird, but go there with me for a second.

Think with me about the fact that it's a good thing that there are weird parts to your Bible. You ever thought about that? That it's a good thing that there are weird, moral perspective, maybe tough parts of the Bible?

I mean, why is it a good thing that we encounter bad moments, weird moments? Honestly, in this chapter, one that's frankly kind of gross. Why is it a good thing that we see these things in the Bible? Can I put it to you, it's a good thing because it tells us that God is not in the business of positive gaslighting.

Do you catch what I mean when I say that? Gaslighting, the term has become really popular in the last few years. When someone tells you that the really obvious thing in front of you is not happening, positive gaslighting is a phrase I've come up with, where you can see something is obviously bad, but instead of acknowledging that it's actually bad, oh, it's not that bad, it's okay.

Like, no, it's not good. It's telling someone the obviously bad thing that they can see can be ignored or dealt with by just being positive. But what does that have to do with this passage? Well, I think it has everything to do with this passage because what we're going to see in Genesis chapter 38 is that God sees the brokenness of our world.

He sees the messiness of our world. Dare I say he sees the sin that exists in our world. In fact, even in the book of Genesis, if you've been with us in almost two years we've been through the book of Genesis, we've seen some pretty wild moments already.

I mean, there was the fall and what happened to our first parents, Adam and Eve. I think we can all agree that wasn't good. There was the generation that existed at the time of the flood. Well, that wasn't very good.

Noah, who is the person who finds favor in God's sight and survives the flood even after the flood. Remember, he has that rather weird moment where he's drunk in his tent. I mean, fast forward in Genesis, there was that whole thing in Sodom.

Everything about that was wrong. And even after Lot, who is Abraham's cousin, survives what happens at Sodom, there's the really unsavory tale of his daughters getting him drunk and sleeping with him.

I mean, you get the idea. I don't need to prolong the torture anymore. But you get the idea. The Bible is a very real book, addressing very real problems with very real honesty. And as we come to Genesis chapter 38, we're going to encounter some more of these very real problems, if you can put it that way.

So more of these dark moments. And as we do, I want you to keep that question we started with in mind. Does God keep his promises even when things look? As we come to Genesis chapter 38, is there a lesson for us even in the dark depths of this chapter?

Yeah, I actually do think there's a lesson for us. I can put it in a sentence. It would be this, that you should trust in God's power to bring about his will, even or especially when things look dark.

That's my big idea for this morning, that you should trust in God's power to bring about his will, even or especially when things look dark. That's the central lesson I want to bring out from this passage this morning, as we come to Genesis chapter 38, that you should trust in God's power to bring about his will, even or especially when things look dark.

That's my big idea this morning. Can I prove it to you? If I may, I want to take the rest of this message. I want to show you five dark snapshots from the life of Judah. Judah is the central character in this chapter this morning.

I want to show you five dark snapshots from the life of Judah, which teach us about how God can use evil to bring about his greater glory. We're going to look at five dark snapshots from the life of Judah.

Five of them means I've got to move pretty quickly. The first of them comes in verses one to five. As I said, our main character today is Judah. He's one of Israel's 12 sons, well, 11 sons. You get that right?

And in these verses, we meet Judah, snapshot number one, being in the wrong place with the wrong people. We meet Judah being in the wrong place with the wrong people. So pick it up with me again in verse one.

At that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adolamite named Hira. It might seem simple enough. It's just telling us, it's setting the scene for the chapter. But can I put it to you that even here, we've already hit a problem because pay attention to what the text says, that at that time Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adolamite named Hira.

Judah is one of Israel's sons. He is a son of the covenant. So why is he leaving the community of the covenant people? And the text doesn't just say he's leaving a group. It says that he's leaving his brothers.

And did you see it says that he's settled near an Adolamite called, excuse me, named Hira. He's leaving this covenant group of people and he's making a purposeful decision to settle near people who are outside of God's covenant.

And it really doesn't get any better as you come to verse two. So verse two, there Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua. He took her as a wife and slept with her. If the first problem is that he leaves the covenant people, he leaves the covenant community to live in this other place.

The second problem is maybe a little worse than the first one. And if you've been with us in our study of Genesis, you may already pick up why this is a problem. For those of you who are maybe joining us for the first time throughout the book of Genesis, the rule for Abraham's family has been for them not to marry Canaanite women.

From the very beginning, Abraham, who is the patriarch of this family line, established a principle with his own son. When it came time for his son to marry, he sent his servant back to his homeland and said, do not go and find, do not let my son marry a woman from this place.

Go back where I came from and find him a wife. By the way, that was Judah's great-grandfather. So he had done that. Judah's uncle, Esau, the brother of his dad, Jacob, he had married Canaanite women.

And remember when we saw that in Genesis, those of you who were here, that he grieved his parents. His own dad didn't marry a Canaanite, married somebody from his mother's homeland. Now, by the way, you've got to be careful here.

This is not because God is a racist. God is not. Not by any stretch. He made all peoples. Now the problem isn't where they come from. This isn't about ethnicity. No, it's about faith. It's about religion.

The Canaanites worshiped the wrong God. And God understands something that I think sometimes as human beings, we don't often understand, which is this. If you put morally neutral people in a bad situation, they naturally move towards the bad situation.

They don't make the bad situation good generally. By Judah, who granted is not morally neutral, for you see the previous chapter, but by moving away from the community of God's people, from the instruction that would have come in the fact that there is a covenant that God has with you as his people, by moving away from that towards the people who had no understanding of these things, think about this.

Is Judah going to, as it were, make the Canaanites better or the Canaanites going to make him like them? Actually, he ends up becoming like them. That's going to be a big theme in this chapter. He adopts their behavior, their values, their, to use the fancy term, their worldview, their way of looking at things.

Even the way Judah finds a wife is more influenced by their pagan ways than it should be. Did you notice those three words that are used in coming together? So look at verse two there, Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua.

He took her as a wife and slept with her. Saw, took and slept. We've seen that progression in Genesis already. If you've been in our study, it goes all the way back to the garden. So remember it says in Genesis three, that when Eve saw Genesis three, six, that the tree, she saw that the tree was good for food and desirable to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.

So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. That same progression, saw, took, partook. Genesis six, two, when the sons of God, which we won't get into all of that discussion, go listen to my sermon on that.

But when the sons of God took the daughters of Mancasus, they saw and they took them as wives. Genesis 34, when Dinah, Judah's sister, is unfortunately raped by the prince of the land that they are in.

Same language, saw, took, raped. Whenever you see this progression of, I see something, I take it and I partake in it, it's never good in Genesis. It's the progression of a bad desire being acted on. I think you can make the case that Judah's relationship with this woman didn't at least start off romantic.

It was a lust-driven decision. And the decision to marry leads to three children. We'll talk about them in just a moment. But before I move on, can I draw your attention to an important lesson that we pick up already?

Here's a lesson. Faith family, who you associate with matters. Who you associate with matters. Judah's move from the covenant community is more than a house move. It was a subtle rejection of God's promises for the pleasure of self.

The reality is the folks that he moves towards don't make him better. I mean, to be fair, they didn't make him bad, but all they did was amplify what was already sadly at work in Judah's heart. And the reality is, if you're Hinton and you're a Christian, in a fallen world, you are under threat from the same danger.

What do I mean? The reality is the world has a mold that it's trying to squeeze you into. And the reality is that as the world tries to do this, who you hang with, who you associate with, more than we often think, it's a big factor on whether that fails or succeeds.

Many of us were raised on the very modern idea that as long as you as an individual are good, it doesn't always matter who you hang around with. By the way, that was not always, even in secular understandings, that was not always the case.

Again, our society has kind of taken a moral freefall. We've become very individualistic. As long as I'm good, it doesn't matter who I hang around with. Actually, the Bible might have something to say about that.

Actually, it does have something to say about that. So again, if you've read the Bible at any point, Psalm 1, how happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers?

There's something to be said for not walking in or standing in the pathway with or even sitting with the company of people who are mockers of what God has to say. Positively, Proverbs 27, 17, if you've been around church any length of time, you've heard this phrase, iron sharpens iron and one person sharpens another.

It was the famous Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, who said that in this verse, we are reminded of the fact that it is important to bear in mind who we do business with. And he was not talking business in terms of money.

He's talking about the business of life. Paul, okay, Kofi, that's in the Old Testament. Well, in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33, Paul says that bad company corrupts good morals over and over and over again in the word of God.

We're pointed to the reality that who you hang out with matters because the reality is that we live in a world where there is no neutrality. You know what I mean when I say that? That there's no fence to sit on.

Like there is either this side or that side, that either the people that you are around are making you more like Christ and more like God in terms of your values, your affections and your actions. They're either doing that or they're making you more like the world.

It was years ago, I was watching a sermon and I heard a preacher say a line that stuck with me. He said, brothers and sisters, not everyone you can count is someone you can count on spiritually. Not everyone you can count, not every person you can see is someone you can count on spiritually.

Now, let me be clear, I can tell what people might be hearing me say in this moment. Kofi, are you saying I should only have Christian friends? Are you saying that I should be unfriendly to the non-Christians in my life and just kind of cut them off?

Kofi, that sounds a little bit much. Well, no, I'm not actually saying that. In fact, it's interesting, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, if you know your Bibles, you know that chapter. Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth.

They've got this guy who is sleeping with his mother-in-law. Again, another honest moment in the Bible. Paul says, look, this is not good. Even non-Christians shouldn't do that. He says, you need to remove this person.

But in fact, turn there with me, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. I want you to see this. Paul does answer the question. Should I cut off all the non-Christians around me? No, Paul has a very explicit answer.

1 Corinthians chapter 5, beginning in verse 9. He's still talking about this immoral church who needs to be disciplined. Verse 9, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

I think we can, okay. Yeah. As Christians, you shouldn't hang around people who are sexually immoral. But look at verse 10 and look at what he says. I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy or the swindlers or idolaters.

Otherwise you would have to leave the world. I like the honesty of Paul here. Paul says, listen, I'm not telling you to go like, there were people in church history who got this idea. I need to go separate myself from the world.

Like go live in the desert. You can look this up in church history. People actually did this. I want to be holy. So if I really want to be holy, I can't be around people. So I need to go live off in the desert and basically deprive myself.

And that's how I'll become holy. To them, I would say, Paul would like to have a word. But Paul says, no, no, no. I'm not talking about the immoral people of this world. He says, well, to be honest, if you did that, you'd have to leave the world.

Look what he says in verse 11. But actually I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or a sister and is sexually immoral or greedy and idolatry or verbally abusive. Interestingly, he puts being verbally abusive in the same category as being sexually immoral, greedy, or an idolater, a drunkard or a swindler do not even eat with such a person.

I love how Paul says this verse 12. But what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don't you judge those who are inside? Paul almost says, my problem is not with the people out there. Essentially, Paul recognizes that there is an in and there is an out group.

So my problem isn't the people out there. The people out there will do what they do. No, my issue is with people who claim the name of Christ and live these ways is do not associate with these kinds of people.

So again, I ask you as a Christian, who are you hanging around with? I mean, it's kind of obvious that God's people ought to surround themselves with, I don't know, God's people. And by the way, not just those who say they are, and I'll put it to you that if the believers and put that in the air quotes, the believers in your life aren't challenging you, aren't inspiring you, aren't pushing you further in your walk with the Lord.

I'm not immediately saying you may need to cut them off. I'm saying you may need to re-examine who's in your circle. My mom, God bless her, had a really tough time raising a child who's as hard-headed as I am.

And she used to say something to me all the time, especially as I was getting older. She would say, do you want to be the thermostat or do you want to be the thermometer? You know the difference between those two?

A thermometer just reads the temperature in a room. It can't influence the temperature in a room. Since I moved to the U .S., most of you in your homes have thermostats of some sort. What does your thermostat do?

It changes the temperature in a room. You might want to ask yourself, am I the thermometer or am I the thermostat? Kofi, what does this have to do with Genesis 38? Well, the reality is Judah, by the way, to be clear, Judah never stopped being a child of the covenant.

He doesn't get disinherited from the covenant because he's making such poor decisions. But he doesn't stop being a child of the covenant. And if I can put it in New Testament terms, you being a Christian is not contingent on who you hang around with, thankfully.

But Judah sure stopped acting like a child of the covenant as he got around folks who weren't. So once again, I leave you with this. Who you associate with matters from Genesis 38. Judah ends up in the wrong place, surrounded by the wrong people.

And that leads to some poor life decisions like snapshot number two, raising sons with the wrong priorities. Raising sons with the wrong priorities. So end of verse five, by the time verse five ends, Judah has three sons, Onan and Shelah.

Okay, that's not a bad thing. You know, the presence of children in the world is always a good thing. But as you read verses six to 11, it becomes very obvious that the disregard that Judah had for his own place as one of God's covenant children, the disregard that he had for this very privileged position that he was born into, it's very apparent that that disregard got passed on to his kids.

Let me show you to you in the passage. So verse six, Judah got a wife for his firstborn and her name was Tamar. He's going to be a really important part of this story this morning. Verse seven. Now, Judah's firstborn was evil in Yahweh's sight and Yahweh the Lord put him to death.

We're not told why he's put to death. We're not given the specific reason other than he did something that was evil in the Lord's sight. We might not know why, we might not know why Ur died, but whatever he did was bad enough that it ended in divine judgment.

We might not know why Ur died, but son number two, the text does tell us. And here's where my content warning for this morning comes in. So verse eight, then Judah said to Onan, sleep with your brother's wife, perform your duty as her brother-in-law and produce offspring for her.

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he released his semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother. What he did was evil in Yahweh's sight.

So he put him to death. Also, I had the fun job this week of digging into what on earth this passage means. I mean, in one sense, the text really makes it obvious what the problem is. But below the surface, there are actually a few other problems here, real ones.

So you know, it's in verse eight, he uses language of perform your duty as her brother-in-law. What's this duty? Well, this was a concept that existed in the ancient Near East. And in fact, later on in Israel's history in Deuteronomy, God will essentially put it in the law.

And the principle was this women in the ancient world were provided for and protected by their fathers. That happened until they got married. Once they got married, they left the protection of their father and came under the provision and protection of their husband.

That's the biblical design. I know our culture might want to argue that, but that's how God designed that to function. Now here's the problem. If your husband died, you could very quickly find yourself penniless and without protection to ensure that women who were in that unfortunate circumstance, to ensure that they were protected.

The custom was that a widow's brother-in-law would marry her and give her a son so that the inheritance of the family would be protected. Any of you read the book of Ruth? If you haven't, it's a really great book in the Bible.

You should read it. In the book of Ruth, that's the whole plot line of the book. This idea that Ruth needs to marry a relative so that the family line can be preserved. Well, the first person who's supposed to do that is one of the immediate brothers.

Here's the problem. The person who did that was basically lowering their share of whatever inheritance was coming. Now, if you've been following us in Genesis, remember that Israel, from whom Judah is going to inherit, Israel was pretty wealthy.

He was a hardworking man to his credit. Plus God blessed him. That always helps. And so here is this man who is now very wealthy, which means when he dies, even with that many kids, they're in for a decent windfall.

Onan makes his decision out of, well, two things. One, pure greed. This offspring means I get a lower share of the inheritance because it's not going to be reckoned as my child. It's going to be reckoned as my brother's child.

It was the old saying, you know, me before thee. He puts his needs before the needs of his widowed sister-in-law. But there's another problem here. Because as bad as that is, it's made worse by the fact that, did you notice the way the text put this?

And I'd read this passage before. It was only this week that I really noticed it said this. So verse nine, Onan knew the offspring would not be his. So whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he was doing this more than once.

He was willing to want to be careful. I'm going to pulpit. I think reverence matters, but essentially he was willing to sleep with Tamar repeatedly. So the point of completion, I will let your imaginations fill in the rest, but he's willing to sleep with Tamar to the point of completion.

And then the text says he would release his semen on the ground. Toffee, where are you going with this? Real simple. He's willing to partake of the pleasure, if you will, without taking on the responsibility.

It's like, well, it's almost as though you can picture this thought process in his mind. I might as well get something out of this. There's no regard for Tamar at all. It's Mother's Day today. I'm really not a fan of preaching Mother's and Father's Day sermons.

I'll save you that rant for another time, but I will say this. One of the most underrated realities of the Bible is how seriously God takes the protection of women. Yes, the Bible is not a feminist book.

Disagree. I'd love to have a conversation with you about it, but it's not, but it is a book that takes the image of God seriously, both male and female. Onan is demonstrating a total disregard for a fellow image bearer in this moment.

She's here for my benefit. I will, quite frankly, use her and abuse her as I see fit. Might I also add that while you cannot blame good parents for the bad choices of their children, I think there's a biblical principle to be said about that, there is something to be said for bad parents setting bad examples, leading to their own children making bad choices.

A verse that gets misquoted all the time, or not misquoted, misunderstood all the time. Proverbs 22 .6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he won't depart from it. That's not a guarantee, by the way.

The point of that passage is this. You let a child do what he wants. Guess what? He'll grow up and do exactly that. I don't think it's an accident that Judah has three sons, and two of them are said to do that, which is evil in Yahweh's sight.

So much so that Yahweh kills them both. Where did they learn that from? I put it to you, they learned it from dad. Kofi, where you get that from? Look at verse 11. Verse 11, then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, remain a widow in your father's house until my son Shayla grows up.

On the surface, seems reasonable. But look at the little comment that Moses adds in verse 11. For he thought he might die too, like his brothers. I wonder where these boys learned this tendency towards self-preservation and self-satisfaction.

I put it to you, they might have learned that from dad. This is not a glowing picture of Judah's parenting. He's raising sons with the wrong priorities. Rather than for them to be caring protectors and providers, they were putting themselves first.

And who's catching the war end of this deal? Tamar is. In a sense, I really shouldn't be surprised. It kind of makes sense that Judah's sons would be men of the wrong priorities. After all, snapshot number three in our passage, we see Judah giving in to the wrong desires.

We see Judah giving in to the wrong desires. So we've had two brothers die. And in fact, Judah's about to experience even more loss. Because look at verse 12. After a long time, Judah's wife, the daughter of Shuah died.

Judah is now a widower. He's lost two sons and now he's lost a wife. Enough time passes. Because the text says it's after a long time. Enough time passes. And Judah is still unmarried. Excuse me, Tamar.

Remember her? Tamar is still unmarried, unprotected, and unprovided for. Then we say, hold on, Kofi. Hold on. Doesn't the text tell us that she went to her father's house? Yes, but that's not God's design.

Genesis 2 .24 is God's design. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and will join to his wife. And those two will become one. That's God's design. Tamar is still unmarried, unprotected, and unprovided for.

And so she takes matters into her own hands. Verse 13. Tamar was told, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. This was a regular practice in the ancient world. If you owned a lot of sheep, it took time to shear them.

So it's kind of an event. So Tamar hears about this. Verse 14. So she took off her widow's clothes, veiled her face, covered herself, and sat at the entrance to Anahim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that though Shayla had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife.

Now let me pause here. It might be easy to blame Tamar for her actions. And let's be clear, she's clearly responsible. She's an adult here. But can we ask an important question at this point? Why is she in this position?

After all, wasn't there a system to protect Tamar? There was, wasn't there? We just explained it. There was a system that was designed to take care of her. And that system, I can't even say the system failed her, to be really honest.

Judah failed her, ultimately. And now here she is. Yes, she is ultimately responsible for her own decisions. But I'm reminded of an event in the life of Jesus not long before he died. Actually, really not long before he died.

He's in front of Pilate. John chapter 19, he's in front of Pilate. And you can tell Pilate really doesn't want to do this, but he feels like he's under pressure. Being a political person will do that to you.

And I remember something that Jesus says to Pilate, almost like he's comforting Pilate. It's an interesting interchange in John 19. So Pilate's sort of hesitant about this. He's like, you don't know that I can kill you right now.

I really don't want to do this. It's kind of the subtext here. But Jesus says something, which I think is interesting. And I think it relates to this passage, John 19, 11. He tells Pilate, you would have no authority over me at all.

If it hadn't been given you from above. Here's the part that gets me. He says, this is why the one who handed me over to you has the greatest sin. He tells Pilate, yeah, you're responsible for your action.

But guess what? The person who put you in this position or the people, the Jewish leaders, they have the greatest sin. Yes, Tamar is responsible for everything that's about to happen in this moment. But let's be honest and say she wouldn't be here if Judah had manned up and taking care of his responsibility.

In a sense, this is real proof that when God's order is rejected, be that in your own life, in your family, as a church, as a society, and even argue as a nation, when God's order is rejected, when you throw all of that out, sin is what follows.

You can't reject the way God made the world to be in the wonder why things go wrong. Judah is about to get his just desserts. And actually he's about to get them in more ways. One, because look at verse 15 again.

Did you catch the way that Tamar pulls off this deception? Verse 15, when Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute for she had covered her face. It's a veil, a piece of clothing that does the deception.

We've seen this already in our study of the life of Joseph so far. What did the brothers use to deceive Jacob and to say that his son was dead? A piece of clothing. It's almost as though Moses wants you to pay attention and say, hey, the seeds of sin that he had sown with his father are now coming back around.

I don't think the Bible teaches karma, but I do think the Bible teaches that you do reap what you sow. And now coming back around and him being deceived in a very similar way. Did you catch from last, those of you who were hearing our last message, did you catch the sense that Judah is kind of impulsive?

He and the brothers. He's a man who sticks to time because he was impulsive when it came to selling Joseph and he's being impulsive here. Verse 18, he sees this prostitute. Verse 16, he went over to her and said, come, let me sleep with you.

Just brazen about it. No sense of shame whatsoever. Come, let me sleep with you. For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, what will you give me for sleeping with me? Verse 17 and 18.