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

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But now, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, take it and turn with me to Genesis chapter 38.

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Genesis chapter 38, hopefully you're there by now. Genesis 38, and if you have one of the red

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Bibles that we give away, that's on page 33. Page 33, Genesis chapter 38, and we're gonna read just the first four verses.

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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 1 to 4.

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Genesis 38 and verses 1 to 4. If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me?

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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.

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And so Genesis and chapter 34, beginning in verse 38, excuse me, and beginning with verse 1.

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Genesis chapter 38, beginning with verse 1. God's Word says to us,

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She gave birth to another son and named him Shelah. It was at Chesed that she gave birth to him.

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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

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Bible this morning. Let's pray. Well Heavenly Father, we ask that as we look at your

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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.

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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.

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Pray for your people who hear, pray for myself as I preach, that there would be a work of your

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Spirit in both speaker and hearer this morning. Father, it's our habit to pray for other area churches, and this morning take a moment to pray for Heritage Christian Fellowship over in Medford.

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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 1

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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.

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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

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Word. We ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. This morning

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I want to speak to you from the subject in our sermon series Joseph, the hidden hand of God.

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I want to speak to you on the subject of the hidden hand of God in preserving his promises through dark times.

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Preserving his promises through dark times. Does God keep his promises even when things look bleak?

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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.

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Does God keep his promises even when things look bleak?

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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.

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I know, to 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

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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.

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As I said, we are in a sermon series that we have entitled Joseph, the hidden hand of God.

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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.

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That though you don't see his hand, his hand is indeed at work.

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And we're going to see that this morning as we come to this passage in Genesis chapter 38.

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Like I said a few moments ago, parts of this message will get pretty rough because the content of the chapter gets pretty rough.

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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,

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I want you to think with me for a moment. This might seem a little weird, but go there with me for a second.

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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?

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That it's a good thing that there are weird, from a moral perspective, maybe tough parts of the

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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?

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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.

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Do you catch what I mean when I say that? Gaslighting, the term that's 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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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He sees the messiness of our world. Dare I say he sees the sin that exists in our world.

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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.

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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.

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There was the generation that existed at the time of the flood. Well, that wasn't very good.

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Noah, who is the person who finds favor in God's sight and survives the flood even after the flood.

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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.

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Everything about that was wrong. And even after Lot, who is

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Abraham's cousin, survives what happens at Sodom, there's the really unsavory tale of his daughters getting him drunk and sleeping with him.

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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.

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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.

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So more of these dark moments. And as we do, I want you to keep that question we started with in mind.

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Does God keep his promises even when things look bleak?

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As we come to Genesis chapter 38, is there a lesson for us, even in the dark depths of this chapter?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I want to show you five dark snapshots from the life of Judah. Judah is the central character in this chapter this morning.

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I want to show you five dark snapshots from the life of Judah, which teach us about how

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God can use evil to bring about his greater glory. So we're going to look at five dark snapshots from the life of Judah.

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So 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

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Judah. He's one of Israel's 12 sons, well, 11 sons. And in these verses, we meet

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Judah, snapshot number one, being in the wrong place with the wrong people. We meet

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Judah being in the wrong place with the wrong people. So pick it up with me again in verse one.

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At that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adolamite named

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Hira. Might seem simple enough. It's just telling us, it's setting the scene for the chapter.

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But can I put it to you that even here, we've already hit a problem? Because pay attention to what the text says.

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That at that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near an

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Adolamite named Hira. Judah is one of Israel's sons.

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He is a son of the covenant. So why is he leaving the community of the covenant people?

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And the text doesn't just say he's leaving a group. It says that he's leaving his brothers.

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And did you see it says that he's settled near an Adolamite called, excuse me, named

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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.

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And it really doesn't get any better as you come to verse two. So verse two, there Judah saw the daughter of a

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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.

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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.

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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

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Canaanite women. From the very beginning, Abraham, who is the patriarch of this family line, established a principle with his own son.

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When it came time for his son to marry, he sent his servant back to his homeland and said, do not let my son essentially marry a woman from this place.

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Go back where I came from and find him a wife. By the way, that was

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Judah's great grandfather. So he had done that. Judah's uncle,

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Esau, the brother of his dad, Jacob, he had married Canaanite women.

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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

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Canaanite. Married somebody from his mother's homeland. Now, by the way, you've got to be careful here.

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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.

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This isn't about ethnicity. No, it's about faith. It's about religion.

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The Canaanites worshipped the wrong God. And God understands something that I think sometimes as human beings, we don't often understand, which is this.

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If you put morally neutral people in a bad situation, they naturally move towards the bad situation.

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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, think about this, 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.

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By moving away from that towards the people who had no understanding of these things, think about this.

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Is Judah going to, as it were, make the

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Canaanites better? Or the Canaanites going to make him like them? Actually, he ends up becoming like them.

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That's going to be a big theme in this chapter. He adopts their behavior, their values, to use the fancy term, their worldview, their way of looking at things.

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Even the way Judah finds a wife is more influenced by their pagan ways than it should be.

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Did you notice those three words that are used in coming together?

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So look at verse two. There, Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named

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Shewa. He took her as a wife and slept with her. Saw, took and slept.

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We've seen that progression in Genesis already, if you've been in our study. It goes all the way back to the garden.

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So remember, it says in Genesis 3 that when Eve saw, Genesis 3 .6, 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.

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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.

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That same progression. Saw, took, partook. Genesis 6 .2, when the sons of God, which we won't get into all of that discussion.

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You can go listen to my sermon on that. But when the sons of God took the daughters of Man, it says they saw and they took them as wives.

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Genesis 34, when Dinah, Judah's sister, is unfortunately raped by the prince of the land that they are in.

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Same language. Saw, took, raped. Whenever you see this progression, if I see something,

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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.

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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.

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And the decision to marry leads to three children. We'll talk about them in just a moment. But before I move on, can

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I draw your attention to an important lesson that we pick up already? Here's a lesson.

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Faith, family, who you associate with matters. Who you associate with matters.

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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.

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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.

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And the reality is if you're hated and you're a Christian, in a fallen world, you are under threat from the same danger.

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What do I mean? Faith, family, the reality is the world has a mold that it's trying to squeeze you into.

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And the reality is that as the world tries to do this, who you hang with, who you associate with, is more than we often think.

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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.

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By the way, that was not always, even in secular understandings, that was not always the case. We, again, as society has kind of taken a more free fall.

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We've become very individualistic. As long as I'm good, it doesn't matter who I hang around with.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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And he was not talking business in terms of money, he's talking about the business of life. Paul, you may think, okay,

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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They're either doing that, or they're making you more like the world. It was years ago,

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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.

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Not everyone you can count, not every person you can see is someone you can count on spiritually.

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Now, let me be clear, I can tell what people might be hearing me say at this moment. Kofi, are you saying

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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?

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Kofi, that sounds a little bit much. Well, no, I'm not actually saying that.

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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.

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They've got this guy who's sleeping with his mother -in -law. Again, another honest moment in the Bible. Paul says, look, this is not good.

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Even non -Christians shouldn't do that. He says, you need to remove this person. But in fact, turn there with me, 1

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Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, I want you to see this. Because Paul does answer the question.

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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.

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

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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.

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I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy or the swindlers or idolaters.

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Otherwise, you would have to leave the world. I like the honesty of Paul here.

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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, you know, separate myself from the world.

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Like go live in the desert. You can look this up in church history. People actually did this. You know, I want to be holy.

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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.

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And that's how I'll become holy. To them, I would like to say, Paul would like to have a word. But Paul says, no, no, no,

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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.

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But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister.

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And it's 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.

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A drunkard or a swindler do not even eat with such a person. I love how

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Paul says this verse 12. But what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don't you judge those who are inside?

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Paul almost says, my problem is not with the people out there. But essentially,

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Paul recognizes that there is an in and there is an out group. So my problem isn't the people out there.

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The people out there will do what they do. No, my issue is with people who claim the name of Christ and live this way.

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He says, do not associate with these kinds of people. So again,

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I ask you as a Christian, who are you hanging around with? I think it's kind of obvious that God's people ought to surround themselves with,

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I don't know, God's people. And by the way, not just those who say they are.

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And I put it to you that if the believers, and we 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

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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,

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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.

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She would say, do you want to be the thermostat or do you want to be the thermometer?

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You know the difference between those two? A thermometer just reads the temperature in a room.

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It can't influence the temperature in a room. Since I moved to the US, most of you in your homes have thermostats or something.

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What does your thermostat do? It changes the temperature in a room. You might want to ask yourself, am

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I the thermometer or am I the thermostat? Coffee, what does this have to do with Genesis 38?

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Well, the reality is, Judah, by the way, be clear, Judah never stopped being a child of the covenant.

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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.

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And if I can put it in New Testament terms, you being a Christian is not contingent on who you hang around with, thankfully.

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But Judah sure stopped acting like a child of the covenant as he got around folks who weren't.

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So once again, I leave you with this. Who you associate with matters.

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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.

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Raising sons with the wrong priorities. So end of verse five, by the time verse five ends,

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Judah has three sons, Onan and Shalah.

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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.

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It's very apparent that that disregard got passed on to his kids.

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Let me show it to you in the passage. So verse six, Judah got a wife for his firstborn and her name was

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Tamar. He's going to be a really important part of this story this morning. Verse seven.

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Now Judah's firstborn was evil in Yahweh's sight.

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And Yahweh, the Lord, put him to death. We're not told why he's put to death.

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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.

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We might not know why Ur died. But whatever he did was bad enough that it ended in divine judgment.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So you notice in verse eight, he uses language of perform your duty as her brother -in -law. What's this duty?

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Well, this was a concept that existed in the ancient Near East. And in fact, in later on in Israel's history in Deuteronomy, God will essentially put it in the law.

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And the principle was this. Women in the ancient world were provided for and protected by their fathers.

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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.

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That's the biblical design. I know our culture might want to argue that, but that's how God designed that to function.

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Now, here's the problem. If your husband died, you could very quickly find yourself penniless and without protection.

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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.

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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.

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This idea that Ruth needs to marry a relative so that the family line can be preserved.

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Well, the first person who's supposed to do that is one of the immediate brothers. Here's the problem.

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The person who did that was basically lowering their share of whatever inheritance was coming.

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Now, if you've been following us in Genesis, remember that Israel, from whom

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Judah is going to inherit, Israel was pretty wealthy. He was a hardworking man to his credit.

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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.

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Onan makes his decision out of, well, two things. One, pure greed.

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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.

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You know, it's the old saying, you know, me before thee. He puts his needs before the needs of his widowed sister -in -law.

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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?

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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.

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So whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he was doing this more than once.

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He was willing to, I want to be careful, I'm in a pulpit. I think reverence matters in a pulpit.

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But essentially, he was willing to sleep with Tamar repeatedly to the point of completion.

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I will let your imaginations fill in the rest. But he's willing to sleep with Tamar to the point of completion.

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And then the text says, he would release his semen on the ground. Buffy, where are you going with this?

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Real simple. He's willing to partake of the pleasure, if you will, without taking on the responsibility.

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So it's almost as though you can picture this thought process in his mind. I might as well get something out of this.

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There's no regard for Tamar at all. It's Mother's Day today.

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I'm really not a fan of preaching Mother's and Father's Day sermons. I'll save you that rant for another time.

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But I will say this, one of the most underrated realities of the Bible is how seriously

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God takes the protection of women. Yes, the Bible is not a feminist book.

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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.

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Onan is demonstrating a total disregard for a fellow image -bearer in this moment. She's here for my benefit.

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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,

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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.

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A verse that gets misquoted all the time, or not misquoted, but misunderstood all the time.

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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.

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The point of that passage is this. You let a child do what he wants.

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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.

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So much so that Yahweh kills them both. Where did they learn that from?

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I put it to you. They learned it from dad. Kofi, where you get that from? Look at verse 11. Verse 11.

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Then Judah said to his daughter -in -law Tamar, remain a widow in your father's house until my son

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Shayla grows up. On the surface, seems reasonable. But look at the little comment that Moses adds in verse 11.

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For he thought he might die too, like his brothers. I wonder where these boys learned this tendency towards self -preservation and self -satisfaction.

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I put it to you. They might've learned that from dad. This is not a glowing picture of Judah's parenting.

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He's raising sons with the wrong priorities. Rather than for them to be caring protectors and providers, they were putting themselves first.

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And who's catching the war end of this deal? Tamar is. In a sense,

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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

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Judah giving into the wrong desires. We see Judah giving in to the wrong desires.

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So we've had two brothers die. And in fact, Judah is about to experience even more loss. Cause look at verse 12.

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After a long time, Judah's wife, the daughter of Shewa died. Judah is now a widower.

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He's lost two sons. And now he's lost a wife. Enough time passes.

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Cause the text says it's after a long time. Enough time passes.

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And Judah is still unmarried. Excuse me. Tamar, remember her. Tamar is still unmarried, unprotected and unprovided for.

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Then we say, hold on, Kofi, hold on. Doesn't, doesn't the text tell us that she went to her father's house?

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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 will join to his wife.

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And those two become one. That's God's design. Tamar is still unmarried, unprotected and unprovided for.

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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.

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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 a event.

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So Tamar hears about this. So she, verse 14, so she took off her widow's clothes, veiled her face, covered herself.

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Sat at the entrance to Anahim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that though Sheila had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife.

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Now let me pause here. It might be easy to blame Tamar for her actions. And let's be clear.

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She's clearly responsible. She's an adult here. But can we ask an important question at this point?

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Why is she in this position? After all, wasn't there a system to protect

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Tamar? There was, wasn't there? We just explained it. There was a system that was designed to take care of her.

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And that system, I can't even say the system failed her, to be really honest. Judah failed her, ultimately.

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And now here she is. Yes, she is ultimately responsible for her own decisions.

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But I'm reminded of an event in the life of Jesus, not long before. Actually, really not long before he died.

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He's in front of Pilate. John chapter 19, he's in front of Pilate.

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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.

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And remember something that Jesus says to Pilate, almost like he's comforting Pilate. It's an interesting interchange in John 19.

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So Pilate's sort of hesitant about this. He's like, do you not know that I can kill you right now? I really don't want to do this. It's kind of the subtext here.

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But Jesus says something, which I think is interesting. And I think it relates to this passage, John 19, 11. He tells

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Pilate, you would have no authority over me at all, if it hadn't been given you from above. It's the part that gets me.

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He says, this is why the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.

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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

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Jewish leaders, they have the greater sin. Yes, Tamar is responsible for everything that's about to happen in this moment.

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But let's be honest and say, she wouldn't be here if Judah had manned up and taken care of his responsibility.

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And 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

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God's order is rejected, when you throw all of that out, sin is what follows.

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You can't reject the way God made the world to be, and then wonder why things go wrong. Judah is about to get his just desserts.

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And actually, he's about to get them in more ways than one, because look at verse 15 again. Did you catch the way that Tamar pulls off this deception?

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Verse 15, when Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

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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.

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What did the brothers use to deceive Jacob and to say that his son was dead?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Well, he's a man who sticks to type, because he was impulsive when it came to selling Joseph, and he's being impulsive here.

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Verse 18, he sees this prostitute, verse 16, he went over to her and said, come, let me sleep with you.

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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.

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She said, what will you give me for sleeping with me? Verse 17 and 18, verse 17, he says,

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I'll give you a goat for my flock. Already that should set off alarm bells if you've been paying attention to Genesis.

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When goats turn up, bad things happen in Genesis. It's a shame really,

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I like goats. But in Genesis, they're usually not a good sign. Jacob deceived his father using a meal that was made from goat, and by wearing the skins of the goat.

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It was the blood of a goat back in Genesis 37 that they used in conning Isaac. You see a goat and you think, oh boy, this is not gonna end well.

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I mean, at least this time, the goat's not actually present. He just says, I'll give you one. And so she said, verse 17, but she said, only if you leave something with me until you send it.

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Verse 18, what should I give you? She answered, your signet ring, your cord, and the staff in your hand.

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Let me pause there for a moment. Those three things are actually pretty important. A signet ring, and actually,

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I'm gonna disagree with my own translation here. The Christian standard Bible, it's not actually a ring.

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It just says a seal. It was more of a cylinder that would have been worn, kind of like his official signature.

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If he did a deal, they would pour wax and then you would roll this cylinder over it, basically giving a signature.

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So he basically hands over his personal signature. It would usually be worn on something of an ornate cord, hands that over to you.

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Even his staff is important because in the ancient Near East, a man's staff was typically marked with his name or some other symbol that identified him.

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It was a symbol of his authority as a ruler. That's why most famous Psalm in the

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Bible, Psalm 23, your rod and your staff comfort me. Staffs were symbols of authority.

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You haven't picked it up already. Judah gives up the symbols of his power, as it were, for temporary pleasure.

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This is not a great picture being painted of Judah right now, but she's willing to take them.

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So Judah sleeps with her and immediately she gets pregnant. Did you catch the way the text said that? So verse 18.

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So he gave them to her, the signet, seal, the cord and the staff.

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He gave them to her and slept with her and she became pregnant by him. I have two kids.

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When my wife was pregnant both times, she didn't know immediately that she was pregnant. That's not generally how biology works.

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But Moses feels the need to tell you that up front. One Bible teacher put it like this quote, the narrative reveals that Tamar became pregnant by that first and only act of intimacy.

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This is one of many subtle indicators that divine providence superintended or saw over the events leading to her impregnation.

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Moses wants you to realize that this is not normal. Something more than what meets the eye is taking place here.

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And file that information away. We're going to need that later on. Well, verse 20,

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Judah comes along and to his credit, he is a man of his word, it seems at least in this area. Because he wants to make good on his pledge.

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He said, hey, I'm bringing my goat back because after all, he doesn't need his stuff back. I can't find her.

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By the way, verse 21. Do you notice that she's given a rather interesting name by Judah?

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Verse 21. He's looking for, he doesn't know it's Tamar, but it's Tamar. He asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who was beside the road at Aniim?

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By the way, she wasn't a cult prostitute, obviously. But Judah didn't seem bothered by that, did he?

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Temple prostitutes were a part of pagan worship. It was one of the things that God found incredibly abhorrent, disgusting about pagan worship.

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That you'd have these women whose whole job was you slept with them and that in itself was an act of worship. But Judah didn't seem bothered by that.

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Think about it. He's supposed to be worshipping the true God. But he has no problem sleeping with someone he thinks is involved in pagan worship.

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It almost makes you wonder, did Judah have like zero regard for the God of his fathers? Come back to our text.

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Judah can't find Tamar. And so he's just like, you know what? I tried. I can't find her. Do you see how he puts it in verse 23?

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He's talking to his friend, the Adolamite. Judah replied, let her keep the items for herself. Otherwise, we will become a laughing stock.

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Because if he doesn't keep his word, then now his public reputation is kind of affected.

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There's a part of me that wants to like pull up to Judah and just say, Judah, I think you've got the wrong priorities.

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I think you've got bigger issues than looking bad because you didn't pay your debt to a prostitute.

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Tamar's pregnant now. And like I said, as a father of two, my experience, pregnant women will eventually show.

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And that sets up the fourth scene. Because we're going to see Judah trying to stand on the wrong principles.

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We're going to see Judah trying to stand on the wrong principles. So by the time verse 24 comes around, three months have passed.

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Enough time for her to start showing. Tamar starts to show, and given that she's twice widowed with no husband, folks aren't slow.

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They start to put two and two together. They start to realize something's not right here. And so verse 24 word gets back to Judah.

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About three months later, Judah was told, your daughter -in -law Tamar has been acting like a prostitute and now she's pregnant.

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Bring her out, Judah said, and let her be burned to death. If you haven't picked up already, there is something profoundly wrong about this scene.

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Judah, remember, who has no problem as an unmarried man. Yes, he's widowed, but he's unmarried.

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He had no problem as an unmarried man sleeping with a prostitute. He wants to put a woman to death for doing the same thing.

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Can we just pause and note the total lack of self -awareness in this moment?

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Well, on her way, you can just picture this scene. This poor pregnant woman is being dragged through the streets to her death.

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If this were like a screenplay or a TV show, you can kind of just picture her saying, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

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Don't you want to know who the guy is? And so verse 25, it says, as she's being brought out, she sends her father -in -law this message.

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I am pregnant by the man to whom these things belong. I mean, you can just kind of, she brings out this stuff and you can, again, if this is

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TV, you can hear the audible gasps. The scandal. She added, examine them.

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Whose signet ring, whose cord and whose staff are these? I would pay good money to have a time machine to go back and see

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Judah's face in this moment. I really would. By the way, this language of sending and examining, same words that were used with what they did with the bloodied coat that they sent back to Jacob.

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Ask him, do you recognize the word recognize in that chapter? It's the same word for examine here. Verse 26,

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Judah's just sheepish at this stage. It says, Judah recognized them and said, she is more in the right than I.

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Since I did not give to her my son, Sheila. And he did not know her intimately again.

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I should hope so. It's funny because Judah tried to stand on principle when he was wrong on just about every possible level.

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I think we can all agree this situation is a mess. It's pretty bleak. Judah has been exposed as a man with really no morals or any fear of God.

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Tamar now has the stigma of being pregnant with no husband, which in the ancient Near East was a really big deal.

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I think I've used this phrase before in a recent sermon where I grew up. We'd have a saying, it's not looking good, bro.

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It's not looking good. We've seen Judah being in the wrong place with the wrong people, raising sons with the wrong priorities, giving in to the wrong desires and trying to stand on the wrong principles.

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It's all a mess. But there is one more snapshot we need to see in this passage.

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And it's Judah receiving God's blessing, even in the wrong. It's Judah receiving

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God's blessing, even in the wrong. So we're in verse 27.

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Tamar was ready to give birth. And verse 27 tells us that it's twins.

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Not one, but two twins. Where have we seen twins in Genesis already?

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For those of you who've been here, Jacob was a twin, had a brother called

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Esau. And when you read the story, in fact, I'll just read the verses, 27 to 30, when the time came for her to give birth, there were twins in her womb.

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And as she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand and the midwife took it and tied a scarlet thread around it, announcing this one came out first.

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But then he pulled his hand back and out came his brother. And she said, what a breakout you have made for yourself.

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So he was named Perez. Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread tied to his hand, came out and was named

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Zerah. Perez, to break out. Zerah, to appear.

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But this story, if it sounds a little familiar, it's got overtones of the story of Jacob and Esau.

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Remember back in Genesis 25? The two nations who are in the womb struggling. In fact, when the boys are born,

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Jacob gets his name, the one who grabs the heel, because he grabs the heel of his brother on the way out. One Bible teacher put it as the

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Jacob narrative began with an account of the struggle of the twins, Jacob and Esau. So now the conclusion of the

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Jacob narrative is marked by a similar struggle of twins. In both cases, the struggle resulted in a reversal of the rights of the firstborn and the rights of the blessing.

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The result of both struggles, Jacob and Esau, Perez and Zerah, was that the younger gained the upper hand over the elder.

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As Jacob struggled with Esau and overcame him, so Perez overcame Zerah, the elder, and gained the rights of the firstborn.

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And we know this if you're taking those numbers 2620, Perez is counted as the firstborn moving forward.

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And that's where our story ends. Two boys born to Judah.

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Oh, by the way, he's lost two sons. But now he has two sons. And that's where our story ends.

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Or does it? Matthew chapter one, page 855, if you've got one of the

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Red Bibles we give away. This is where our story ends. Matthew chapter one, this is the record of the birth of Jesus.

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And it begins with a very well -crafted genealogy, a listing of the family background of Jesus.

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And in Matthew chapter one, you read these words. That's the first three verses. An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers.

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Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And you think, oh, what's the big deal about that?

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It's a list of names. Please note that all four of the main characters in today's story,

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Judah, the wayward son of the covenant, Tamar, the scrappy Canaanite woman, and the two boys born out of wedlock, they all find their place, inarguably, the most important family line in history.

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I mean, can we be honest? Tell me, I'm not offended. I didn't write the story. Genesis 38 is nuts.

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I mean, it's messy from floor to ceiling. But out of this mess, out of this bleak situation of failure on every side, sin and weakness and total disregard for God, out of this,

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God was preserving his promises. Neither Judah nor Tamar, neither of them are exactly the worthiest candidate for the goodness and grace of God.

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But that's kind of the point, isn't it? I mean, isn't the point that no one is worthy of God's grace, that's why it's grace.

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I mean, that's been the point in Genesis. Think back, if you have the study guide in front of you, that melodic line that we have, that despite the failure of God's covenant people,

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God's purposes and plans will come to fulfillment, not through the faithfulness of others, but the faithfulness of God.

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God's dealing with his people, and let me bring it all the way to you right now, sitting in there in that chair. God's dealing with you is not on the basis of whether you deserve it or not.

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God's dealing with you is not on the basis of whether you come from the right background or you've done the right things, whether you've done enough or earned enough.

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I believe the right way to read

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Genesis chapter 38 is that even in the midst of dark times,

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God is still at work preserving his promises. I mean, this whole story might seem a little bit out of place.

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Aren't we talking about Joseph? Why are we doing a whole chapter talking about Judah? Because Judah is the one to whom ultimately the promises will be fulfilled.

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Even though Judah doesn't deserve it, even though Judah is a very, very, very unprincipled man, but that's not the point.

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Because the God that we deal with is a God of grace, and nowhere better do we see that than in the very gospel itself.

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That the Bible says, I don't know if this blows your mind like it does mine, Romans 4, 5, that God justifies, he declares righteous the ungodly.

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I mean, on the surface, that shouldn't make sense. How can we say that God justifies the ungodly?

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Well, he can do that because there is somebody who has taken the place of the ungodly, suffered the punishment that they deserve, and then gives his righteousness to ungodly people, like the rest of the

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Bible. Genesis 38, if you read it with the right lens, gets you on the road that ends up with the gospel.

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And so even in the darkest of times, God is at work preserving his promises.

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And Father, we thank you because you are indeed always at work. That though we may not see your hand in action, we know that it is in action.

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Even when there is sin, and there is failure, and there is weakness, we know that you are in full control.

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Father, we thank you that out of the messiness of Judah and his actions came a savior who will cleanse any and all who would turn in faith to him.

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So Father, I pray for anybody here who doesn't know you, or anybody who's listening who doesn't know you. I pray that they would see the wondrous grace that you have shown in the person of Jesus.

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I pray that they would pass from spiritual death to spiritual life. And for those of us who are here as believers, may we trust in your power to bring about your promises, even or especially when things look dark.

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And Father, as we come before this table that we celebrate, that reminds us of the fact that you have overcome the greatest darkness of all the grace, the darkness of sin.

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May we come with hearts that rejoice, not mourn, but rejoice at what you have done for us as we celebrate it together.