Genesis 38, The Veil

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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Genesis 38, starting in verse 1, we'll be reading the entire chapter. Hear the word of the Lord. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain

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Adulamite whose name was Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was

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Shewa. He took her and went into her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name

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Ur. She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. Yet again, she bore a son, and she called his name

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Shelah. Judah was in Chezeb when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was

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

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

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

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

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So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shewa's daughter, died.

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And when Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah, to his sheep shearers, he and his friend

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Hira, the Adalamite. And when Tamar was told, your father -in -law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up and set at the entrance to Enium, which is on the road to Timnah, for she saw that Shelah was grown up and she had not been given to him in marriage.

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When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. And he turned to her at the roadside and said, come, let me come into you, for he did not know that she was his daughter -in -law.

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

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And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it, he said, what pledge shall

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I send you? What shall I give you? She replied, your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand.

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So he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away.

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And taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood. When Judah sent the young goat by his friend, the

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Adalamite, to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who was at Enium at the roadside?

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

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Also, the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here. And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at.

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You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her. About three months later,

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

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

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

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Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son,

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

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

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But as he drew back his hand, behold, the brother came out and she said, what a breach you have made for yourself.

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

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Zerah. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Bet you never, some of you never thought you'd hear that read out loud in church.

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That's what happens when you committed to expository preaching. You go to it all. Anyway, one of my favorite things to do as a pastor, besides reading passages like that, but one of the favorite things to do, which

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I haven't gotten to do nearly enough, unfortunately, is perform weddings. Number one, it's really easy from my point of view.

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I mean, no one cares if you carry your notes right in front of me, you know, and just read from them.

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No one cares. But most importantly, it's great to be right there in the middle of what is one of the most important events in many people's lives.

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It's an honor and a pleasure. In fact, I have as my policy not to accept payment for performing weddings if the couple are church members.

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First, because I see it as part of my role as a pastor. And really, just because it's so much fun.

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I mean, really, you're going to pay me to do that? I mean, if you're smart, you could probably get me to pay you to do that.

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Whatever. But you know, how many times do you get to tell two people to kiss and they do it?

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I mean, really. That's kind of fun. But what does take some work beforehand, however, is the premarital counseling.

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Before the wedding, I require some premarital counseling so that they understand what they're getting into. Not that they really will, but whatever.

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And in the very first session, always the very first session with the engaged couple, not yet married, about from now until the wedding,

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I always give one two -word instruction. I try to make it as simple and unmistakable as I possibly can.

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No sex. Of course, I know if I were dealing with people outside the church,

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I'd probably be way too late. Many are now just living together before marriage. And the idea of saving sex for marriage is now so foreign as to be, in our day, it's basically confined only to Christians, or at least to very moral religious people.

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Now it is considered antiquated to save sex for marriage. I could give you the statistics.

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I started to look them up. Normally, I would do that kind of thing, give you the statistics. But they're so depressing.

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You might feel like we're fighting a losing battle on this. And we might as well just give up. Everyone does it, right?

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I've even heard so -called Christian counselors say that since couples are going to have sex before marriage, we should just go ahead and tell them how to do it responsibly, which from a biblical point of view is like telling someone, it's like saying, since people are going to have idols in their life, we might as well tell them how to practice safe idolatry.

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I know that's the assumption. Everyone does it. But still, I'm going to tell an unmarried couple, no sex.

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Now, some Christians approach to this. Many would agree with me. OK, we've got to tell them that. But what their approach would be try to convince unbelieving people of really of the great advantages of abstinence before marriage.

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And so they'll make their list and tell people all the advantages of chastity. And that's not a bad thing to do.

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It can be a good thing. Those list things, it helps you develop communication first. It helps you question the relationship so you're not so emotionally already tied into it.

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You can't look at it dispassionately. It makes it easier to break up if necessary.

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It helps you succeed in marriage, all of which is true. But I don't believe any of that is going to keep people overwhelmed maybe with hormones or lust or even with real meaningful love to keep from having sex.

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I believe for most that the only force capable of doing that is a real commitment to the

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Lord and integrity that you are going to live his way, even when no one else can see.

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The only power that will keep most people from surrendering to the power of sex is something more powerful, the

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Holy Spirit in your life. And he will produce in you an identification of yourself as one of God's people.

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Paul says in Romans 8, he makes you cry out, Abba, Father. You see God as your father now.

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And so you commit yourself to live his way, holy, even if everyone else in the world is pushing you to conform.

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And while we see all that here in Genesis chapter 38, believe it or not, first in conformity, then in immorality, then in integrity, and then in sanctity, and finally in identity.

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Everyone does it, right? Even Judah, Judah does it. Soon after being the smart guy who traded

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Joseph away instead of killing him, Judah moves out. He gets away from the rest of the family and gets close to a

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Canaanite friend, Hira. Now, Judah, now he's living among the

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Canaanites. And there among the Canaanites, he sees a Canaanite woman. He likes, he marries her.

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And this is precisely what his uncle Esau did in the previous generation, marrying Canaanite women and being drawn into their society, into their culture and their ways.

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Intermingling leads to intermarrying, which leads to conformity. Now, the

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Bible is clear really over and over again about the problems that happen when believers in the

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Lord marry non -believers. Abraham, you know, sent a servant back to his homeland to get a wife for Isaac because he didn't want

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Isaac marrying an unbelieving Canaanite. That servant comes back with Rebekah. Next generation,

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Rebekah and Isaac send Jacob away to get a wife for him because they didn't want him marrying

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Canaanites like Esau had. Solomon is said to have been wooed away from following the

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Lord because of his unbelieving wives. When the people of Israel in the days of Nehemiah, they're coming back to Israel and Nehemiah, he just throws a fit.

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I mean, he's tearing people's hair out and he's really shouting at them. When he sees that they are marrying unbelieving women.

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In the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul says Christians are free only to marry in the

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Lord. If someone becomes a Christian after they've been married, then they should not use that as a reason to divorce or separate from their unbelieving spouse.

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The marriage is still sanctified, but a Christian should not be marrying a non -Christian.

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God says we're not free to do such a thing. That option is not open to us. Now, I like performing weddings and I'd be willing to perform one for two non -believers, but I would not perform one in which one was a professed

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Christian and the other wasn't. To do that would help the believer sin against God.

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Again, intermingling leads to intermarrying, which leads to conformity. Now, notice how conformed

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Judah is becoming to Canaanite culture here. First, he intermingles.

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His best friend is apparently a Canaanite. Now, not that it's wrong to have unbelieving friends. It's not.

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It can be good. It can be an advantage. But if the Lord is your passion and he's your priority, you want to live his way.

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You want his principles to guide your life. He just determines the way you think and live.

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And when you're like that, it's not that you have to be unfriendly to unbelievers to keep them from being close friends to you.

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It's that they're just so different from you. You know, what they love the most, whatever it is, pleasure, money, power, pride, partying, whatever, is so different than what you love the most, the

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Lord. There's just not that much you have in common then. Now, obviously, it wasn't that way with Judah, was it?

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He didn't seem to have a lot in common with the Canaanites all around him. He got along well with his Canaanite friend Hira, liked the

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Canaanite woman he saw, had three children with his Canaanite wife. He intermingled, intermarried, and eventually conformed.

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And we see his conformity in his immorality. Tamar, his daughter -in -law, is due a husband from this family.

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And after being put off and lied to, she decides she'll take care of matters herself.

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And she knows exactly how. She dresses as what they call a cult prostitute.

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That's what she called in verses 21 and 22. Now, you gotta know something about that because it's kind of different.

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The cult prostitutes, that's what they're called, were veils, unlike the regular prostitutes.

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Of course, the veil was also a way to signal that they were attached to some kind of pagan god, like Baal, or Baal, however you wanna pronounce it.

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And so doing business with them, with the cult prostitute, was a way to support the pagan religion.

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So it wasn't just money, or here, goats, for sex. It was money, or goats, for Baal and sex.

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Now, you would think that that would put Judah off, right? You would think he wouldn't want anything to do with a cult prostitute because that's participating in paganism.

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The family of Jacob was supposed to have put away all his pagan gods and was going to be devoted to the Lord. But when

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Judah saw the opportunity, when Tamar put herself in front of him, dressed like a cult prostitute, well, lust triumphed over orthodoxy.

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He gave in. Tamar knew he would, didn't she? I mean, she knows what the weak spot is.

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Notice in verse 13, she's told that Judah would go for the sheep shearing. Now, at their time, that was often party time.

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I can, you know, you can guess. They get a break from following those animals through the pastures. They clip their wool.

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They send it to traders. They sell it to traders, probably were right there. And so they got extra money in their pockets, right?

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It's like Christmas bonus time. So they want to spend it. And probably, you know, people with something to sell would be attracted to that.

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Likely, I'd imagine a little carnival grew up around the sheep shearing. And Tamar knows exactly what

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Judah intermingled, intermarried, and now conformed to Canaanite culture, what he would like to do.

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Canaanite culture was absorbed in sexual revelry. Everything anyone might want was available for their indulgence.

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It was a culture of total debauchery. No restraints, no judgment, no inhibitions, lots of carousing, a spree of sensual indulgence.

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If it feels good, do it. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

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I bet you Canaanites love those kinds of songs, slogans. And it's exactly for this and their barbaric paganism, which celebrated that total surrender to eroticism.

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Imagine for them, prostitution, immorality was part of the religion. And they even had child sacrifices to go along with it.

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It's exactly all of that that the Lord condemned. He told Israel in Leviticus chapter 18, that it's for these things that he's driving the

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Canaanites out of the land. He said that the land itself is so repulsed, probably means God himself, the owner, the creator of the land, by their immorality, that he was vomiting them out.

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But you, God says to Israel, are to be different, to be holy, to be sanctified.

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Oh, come on, everybody does it, right? No, God tells us clearly that we profess to be his people are to be different.

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Our sexual behavior must be different than unbelievers. That is one of the things that sets us apart.

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That's why at the end of Leviticus 18, when he describes all these sins of the Canaanites, you must not do them and God concludes with, so keep my charge, never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you and never to make yourselves unclean by them.

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I am the Lord, your God. Now, notice first that just like today, there are customs, you know, a custom is, right?

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They're common practices of the culture, kind of accepted, everybody does it kind of things.

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Like it's a custom to shake hands when two people meet in America. Like in China, it's a custom to eat with chopsticks, okay?

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It's just part of the culture, everybody does it. People don't think it's wrong or weird. And then there, and really it's getting to be where now here, it's the custom that as long as two adults are consenting, or maybe they're confined to two anymore, we could do pretty much anything we want to do sexually and something is wrong with you if you say there's something wrong with that.

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You're the bigot or the psychologically suppressed person who needs to explore the wonderful world of no boundaries, like in movie after movie where following your impulses, you know, tear out the rule book, stand on your desk.

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I don't know what that does, that's what brings you life. Finally, it will bring a little color into your black and white world.

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Freedom to do whatever you feel like doing led by your urges. Saw a movie just two nights ago. It's our urges that make us human.

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Really? I thought the dogs have urges, does that make them human? The joy of shameless self -indulgence.

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That, our culture says, is freedom. And if we're intermingled with that culture, we're conformed to it, we've absorbed that way of thinking, even if we call ourselves a

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Christian and we're alone with that special someone, but not married to, on a couch late one night, that conformity of mind will lead to conformity of behavior.

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We'll be having sex just like most of the world does. Now the temptation for us as the church is to make rules.

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Here's what you can do and what you can't do. Where you can be alone and where you can't be alone.

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How you can or how you cannot touch. Only supervise sideways hugs.

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Sorry, I just like that. And rules can be useful as brakes to help slow us down so we notice what we're doing before it's too late.

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But if those rules don't flow out of a heart that wants above all to be holy, a life given as a living sacrifice to the

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Lord, a mind that has not been conformed to the world but wants to be transformed by the word of God.

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If that love for the Lord, if your identity as one of God's holy people is not driving you and so driving your rules,

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I doubt they'll last very long. I think rules that are just cold, hard disciplines, you know, strictures for when you're feeling strict, set up to try to keep you from living like you really are.

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I think rules like that will melt like butter when temptation comes hot and steamy.

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Well, sexual purity must mark the people of God, must be part of our identity. Leviticus 18 says that, be different.

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1 Corinthians 6 -7 says that, flee sexual immorality. Genesis 38 here shows us the danger when that doesn't happen.

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Then God's people become conformed to the world's people and soon they won't be

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God's people much longer. Look what happened here. Judah moves away from his family, family that believes in the

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Lord. He intermingles with the Canaanites. He marries a Canaanite and then his children might as well be

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Canaanites, right? He has three sons. When the oldest, Ur, is old enough to be married,

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Judah gets Tamar for her. She's now part of the family. But Ur, it says in verse seven, was wicked in the sight of the

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Lord and the Lord put him to death. Whoa, he was so bad, the

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Lord took him out himself. But that leaves poor Tamar a widow and childless.

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And so the custom was that the next brother take her and that the first son she has is considered basically in place of the first brother, considered the son of the first brother,

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Ur. And so he, that is the new son, inherits everything that Ur would have inherited.

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That's not confusing, is it? Okay, second brother has a son that takes the first brother's place.

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Now here, the next son is Onan. Now Onan doesn't like that idea, right?

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He's probably thinking, okay, Ur has been taken out and that means it's only me and Sheila. Then we'll divide dad's stuff 50 -50.

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I don't wanna replace Ur. We have to divide it three ways. That's less for me.

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Now, why should he help divide up the inheritance from his father? Now he could just say, I'll pass, like the man did with Ruth in that book, the book of Ruth.

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The first in line to take Ruth as a wife and carry on her first husband's name didn't wanna do it.

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And so he passed and Boaz got her. So Onan could simply decline.

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That's an option. Now, if you did that for a brother, it was considered kind of shameful. In Deuteronomy 25, it says that if a man refuses to do that for his brother, then they are to come to the city gate, they, the man and the widow of the first brother, come to the city gate and the widow of the first brother is to take the sandal off the second brother who is declining and then spit in his face.

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And then after that, everyone is to call his house, the house of him who has his sandal pulled off.

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Okay, I don't, okay. Otherwise everyone know he's kind of, he did a shameful thing.

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It was shameful not to want to carry on your brother's name, but it could be done. Okay, there's no death penalty for it or something like that.

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What absolutely was not to be done was what Onan decided to do. He didn't want to carry on his brother's name.

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So he should have declined, but he apparently did want to have sex with Tamar.

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That he didn't want to decline. In other words, he lacked brotherly love, but he didn't lack the lust that Canaanite culture promoted.

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Now remember Judah had probably about 20 years earlier, intermingled, intermarried and now conformed.

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And look how, look how Canaanite like Judah's sons are.

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In verse nine, Onan is using his, this custom of taking your brother's wife really as an excuse to have sex with her.

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And that's it. But just to keep having to lose any inheritance, to keep from happening what this was supposed to be all about.

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That is provide children for Tamar and for his deceased brother. Well, he practices birth control such as they had it then.

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Now, some have interpreted this to be a prohibition on birth control. I don't believe that's the meaning of this passage. Now, I guess if you happen to find yourself having to marry your older brother's widow, yeah, yeah, don't practice birth control with the first.

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Okay, whatever. But rest of the time, I don't think that really this passage has bearing on the regular, on the practice of birth control.

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Remember the purpose of this relationship is to create offspring for his brother, Tamar. Now, he could have declined, even if it was considered shameful.

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He should have declined. But instead of that, he sees this as an excuse to have sex without consequences.

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And then, just as Canaanite culture then and our American culture now tells him or us, he sees that opportunity.

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He practices birth control because he doesn't care about his brother or about the woman he's having sex with, but only about satisfying his own lust.

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And the Lord sees that because there's no wall or veil that he doesn't see through.

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And so he puts him to death too at the end of verse 10. Sexual purity must be one of the marks of God's people.

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But here, Onan, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, is acting like any lust -driven unbeliever.

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So God puts him to death. In the New Testament, the only specific example we have of church discipline is overt sexual immorality in 1

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Corinthians 5. And then the apostle Paul launches into a long teaching on why Christians must flee sexual immorality, telling us not to be deceived no matter what people say, even if they say everyone does it,

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God understands, wink, wink. Paul says, inspired by the

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Holy Spirit that no sexually immoral person will inherit the kingdom of God. That's why we insist on sexual purity.

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That's why I tell Christian couples not yet married, no sex. I know it seems like everybody is doing it, but sexual purity must be one of the marks of God's people.

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Now, immediately some will protest, either we should shut up or we're obsessed with sex.

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I'm not sure which it is, but whatever. We're obsessed, we Christians are obsessed with sex. They say, if we address it, we say no sex for unmarried people.

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We practice church discipline for those who get caught up in it and will not repent. Then they say we're obsessed with sex and revealing our own psychological inhibitions, our own repression or whatever they call it.

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And the truth is that some Christians do have weird inhibitions that keep them from directly addressing this issue.

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For some even to say the word sex in a sermon is horrible and you shouldn't be talking like that. Sex, I'm saying, is to be dealt with, is dealt with so delicately,

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I've heard this said, is dealt with so delicately in the Bible, with euphemisms and mysterious analogies about gardening.

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And so we should deal with it in the same way, which in other words, not at all, or in such coded language that no one knows what we're talking about, especially the people who might actually get involved in sexual immorality.

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They don't have any idea what we're talking about. Now, to such people, I say, have you ever read

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Genesis 38? Really? This would be a movie, it would be R -rated. Oh, God is not shy about sex.

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He designed it, the very first command to us in scripture is to be fruitful and multiply.

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It's not a shameful, dirty thing that needs to be suppressed. There is a sanctity, a holiness about sex.

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In fact, in reality, we never disapprove of sex per se in and of itself, but how it is abused, how it is used selfishly.

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We encourage married couples to have healthy sex lives. God wants sex to be sanctified in marriage.

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Sexual purity must mark the people of God. When it doesn't mark Onan, he's conformed to a self -indulgent, immoral culture, then

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God shows he will not allow his professed people, people who say they're

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God's people, to live like they're the world's people. He kills him.

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Then in verse 11, Judah tells Tamar to go home to her father and wait till the third son,

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Shelah, is old enough to marry. Well, that's what he says, but inwardly he's thinking, she's bad luck.

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All right, notice near the end of verse 11, for he feared that he, Shelah, would die like his brothers. Judah doesn't have any sense, even that, showing that, in other words, he thinks somehow the death of the two brothers is

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Tamar's fault, so he doesn't have any sense that his sons have been bad, that they've been doing something wrong, and so that the

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Lord judged him for. Whatever Ur did, we don't know. We're not told precisely, but Judah didn't apparently blame him for it, did he?

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Onan, he probably figured, so what? Onan was just having his kicks. You know, boys will be boys, you know.

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Everybody does it, and so the real problem must be this woman, this Tamar.

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So Tamar goes back home and she waits. Now understand, in their day, Tamar's marketability on the marriage market was pretty much over.

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She's been married already, maybe twice. She's supposedly betrothed to this kid, Shelah, but Judah has really no intention of letting his last remaining son marry her.

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She has no children, and in their day, one's children, especially one's sons, okay, they were your protection, they were your police, your

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Social Security, your pension, your retirement, all in one, right?

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When you got too feeble to care for yourself, if you didn't have a son to take care of you, you were in trouble, right?

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There's no Social Security office to call on, you know, nothing. You got a family that's gonna do it, and so you had no protection from criminals, you had no source of food, no one to help you, nothing.

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So Tamar is desperate for children, especially sons. As time goes on, and Shelah's grown up, he's old enough already, you know, and Tamar realizing the wedding planner isn't calling to make arrangements, she realized that Judah was not keeping his word.

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He lied, in other words. Can you believe it, he would lie? Now, so she covers herself with a veil, it's the veil of a cult prostitute to hide who she really was.

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So he lies to her, now she's lying to him, as though she's a usual Canaanite cult prostitute.

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Now, immorality, far from being this kind of harmless indulgence and pleasure, spawns all kinds of other sins, like dishonesty, lying, hiding, all necessary to do the deed.

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Now, she knows where her father -in -law would be traveling, so she sets up her ambush, she seems to know him well, and he falls right into her trap so that she not only gets pregnant by him, but she's smart enough to get his signet.

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Notice the things she asked for, are things that would clearly identify him. Signet is like a stamp that he would use to seal documents, prove it's him, like his little personal trademark.

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And the cord it was on, walking staff would often be carved, it's not just a stick he picked up out of the woods, it's carved in his particular way.

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And she knew she would need those later to prove what he would have tried to deny.

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She's not interested in the goat he wants to pay with, she wants the proof that it was he.

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And so when his friend Herak, the Canaanite, tries to find her to pay for the goat, she's nowhere to be found, she doesn't care about the goat, the people around there don't know what he's talking about, you know, what cult prostitute, because Tamar was by the roadside probably for such a short time, just long enough to catch

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Judah, and Judah doesn't want to look too carefully, he didn't want to ask too many people, he's not gonna put out an ad in the whatever, the

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Shechem shopper, because he'll be embarrassed, has anyone seen my

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Signet and walking staff? You know, he'd be embarrassed with a guy who was silly enough to entrust his valuable Signet and staff with a prostitute, okay?

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And just as before, when Judah concocted the plan to sell off Joseph and then hide the crime by ripping the coat of many colors and dipping it in blood, goat's blood, and then sitting by his father

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Jacob for days and days as he grieved for his son, but he refused to tell him the truth, because doing that, although it would relieve his father's grief, it would make him ashamed, and he didn't want to be shamed before his father.

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Just as then, he's driven by fear of shame, not caring about guilt.

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Notice there, where he tells his friend, you know, we'll be laughed at, that's what he cares about.

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Here he's guilty of sexual immorality, God sees the guilt, but he's not concerned about that, he just doesn't want word getting out that he was enticed by a prostitute, that would be shameful, that would be embarrassing.

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But God is about to put the man who only cares about shame and not guilt, he's about to put him to shame.

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God will display not only his lust, but his lack of integrity. About three months later, it becomes obvious that Tamar is pregnant, people tell

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Judah that she's been immoral, which she has, sex outside of marriage is immoral, and God's people are supposed to be free of that.

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So Judah, in a fit of self -righteous indignation, exclaims, bring her out and let her be burned, in verse 24.

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Ah man, he's a great moral leader of the community, isn't it great to have men standing up for morality in high places, isn't it?

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Well, he was gonna show how a moral man he was by standing up, but he didn't think first, well, what about myself?

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What do I owe Tamar? She's supposed to be part of our family, I'm supposed to provide for her.

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He doesn't even seem to pause. He doesn't even go to her himself, looking into it, questioning her, questioning himself.

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Notice in verse 25, she has to send word, and then send the tokens to him.

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He's not even there. Maybe he's at another sheep shearing festival, hoping to find another girl.

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And then, as she was being brought out, notice that, as she was being brought out.

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In other words, they're getting the stuff ready to execute her. They're piling up the stones to stone her with, and they're stacking the wood for their fire.

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They're feeling self -righteous about how they're going to, they're gonna teach this immoral woman a lesson, and all you kids take notice.

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So, she sends the tokens to Judah, and he realizes, oh no, she was the woman in the veil, and I'm the father.

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You know, like one of those afternoon talk shows. DNA test prove, or your signet ring, and your walking stick prove, you're the father.

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And so, humiliated, ashamed, and proven to be guilty by the woman he was about to have executed, whom he had lied to, and unknowingly committed immorality with, he finally confesses in verse 26, she is more righteous than I.

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In a couple of years, maybe just a few months, from this time, it would be

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Judah, who would be the one of all the brothers, who would be humbly beg, this man, this leader in Egypt they didn't know, turned out to be

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Joseph, would humbly beg him for mercy. Perhaps it was at this moment that Judah first learned humility, when he had to admit, she is more righteous than I.

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Well, finally, Tamar has the child. Oh, it's a surprise, children, they're twins. But a strange thing's happened at birth, when one baby reaches out its hand, the midwife ties a scarlet thread around it, he's first, but wait, somehow the other baby manages to,

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I don't know how a baby could do that, but he wrestled his way past the first one, and he comes out first, breaking through.

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So he's named a breach or a breakthrough, Perez. It's a sign that all of this, all this whole story, as ugly and as immoral as it has been, will be an evil that God will use for his purposes.

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Again, providence is at work. Now, sure, people are responsible for their sinful decisions.

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Judah was sinful. He's responsible for his sinful decisions. But if all you can see here is immorality, people's immoral choices, that would be like only seeing the veil covering the hand of God, just working through all of this.

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Here, Perez, Mr. Breakthrough, will be the child that God will use to bring us

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David. And David, who broke Israel through to finally be free of the suppression by its enemies, those centuries when they were living under whatever king next oppressed them.

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Sure, there would be judges here and there who would give them a few decades or a few years of freedom, but they would go back to being suppressed by their enemies, and then they would go back to practicing immorality, just like the world around them.

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It would be David who would break Israel through by defeating the tyranny of Goliath.

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It would be David who broke Israel through to finally fulfill God's promises to that nation. And then, from Perez, eventually, it would be

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Jesus himself who broke through to give us the kingdom of God. Well, again, we can play the what if game.

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You know, what if this had happened? Or what if this hadn't happened? Last week, it was, what if Joseph isn't sold into slavery?

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Remember? In Egypt. Well, then the family dies, and God's promise dies with it, and our salvation dies with it.

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Well, here, in Genesis 38, what if Tamar doesn't have

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Perez breakthrough? You know, what if none of this happened?

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Just our Tamar just sits at home in her widow's garments into old age and never has

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Perez? Well, then there is no breakthrough. No David, no

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Jesus, and God's people remain, like in Judges, Judges then, suppressed by the world with no deliverer capable of taking them out from the suppression, the oppression of the world's

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Goliaths. No king, no kingdom of God, no salvation, only suppression and sin and eventually assimilation as we become just like the world.

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What if, no Perez, we lose our identity?

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But with God, there are no what ifs. Now, sure, here we see that they are in dire danger of losing their identity as the people of God.

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They're intermingling, intermarrying, and conforming. They're living just like the world, already becoming just as immoral, using sex just like the world does.

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Soon there won't be anything left to set them or us apart, and they'll be absorbed into this depraved culture around them.

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So just as there is a natural famine coming that God can see that will destroy

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God's people if Joseph is not in Egypt, there is also a moral plague that is eating away at this family, and it will destroy them if they are not quarantined, they're not separated from the

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Canaanite culture. If this family continues to go down the road of Judah, becoming like the immoral world around them, well, then they disappear, and so does our hope.

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So does our life, our hope for life to live free of condemnation, free of the tyranny of sin, of lust of all kinds, not only of sexual immorality, but of materialism.

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That lust of always having to have more and better things, of more money, or the lust of pride.

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How dare anyone disgrace me? I will not be made ashamed.

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Or that angry determination that our will should rule, our hope to live free of that in God's kingdom.

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That depends on Tamar having that son who broke through.

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There are no what -ifs with God. There is instead providence and sovereignty.

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Providence God working through, sovereignty God ruling over.

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That's why Tamar is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter one, verse three. God used all of this, this sordid story, to break his kingdom through, to bring us

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Jesus who brought us the kingdom of God. Sometimes we can't see what

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God is doing because of the veil of human actions as immoral as they often are, but God is at work.

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God will keep his promise. He will save his people.