SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we have extra copies.
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody will drop one off at your row.
SPEAKER_00: Uh otherwise, you can also look up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see the network if you have a Bible online you'd like to use.
SPEAKER_00: There are many choices for you.
SPEAKER_00: I believe there's one on our phone app as well.
SPEAKER_00: And uh you are welcome to uh dial into that network there and uh be able to turn to Genesis, which we're studying our uh way through verse by verse, chapter chapter, through this book, the first book of the 66 books in the library that we call the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And um it's it's called Genesis, which means beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And so we we uh we find here not only the story of the beginning, the original beginning, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and everything else flows from that.
SPEAKER_00: But we also find starting uh that that that the book of Genesis helps uh us to manage some of the really big questions that we've had since the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Where did everything come from?
SPEAKER_00: Why is this the something that exists?
SPEAKER_00: Um what's gone wrong and what can be done about it?
SPEAKER_00: And so we have turned to this ancient book, and it has been so helpful for us.
SPEAKER_00: Today, we're starting chapter 38.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I want you to know if you were looking for a nice religious experience this morning, I want to apologize in advance to you.
SPEAKER_00: Um if you were hoping I would tell you about how God is sweet and nice and just always wants you to be happy and uh uh and is the giant Santa in the sky, the doting deity, um, the kindly cosmic concierge whose primary goal is your happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm really sorry, today is not your day.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is a tough chapter.
SPEAKER_00: But what I love about the Bible is that it doesn't sidestep the realities of the brokenness of our world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not just uh uh sort of a Disney fight, nothing wrong with Disney if you love Disney, but it's not just a sort of a you know feel good book that's just designed to make sure we stroke the seekers and massage the tithers and try to get everything we can out of everybody else, you know, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the Bible at all.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is a it's like a mirror and and it and it it's held up to show us what we need to learn about ourselves as well as what God has revealed about himself.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this is a fascinating chapter uh when we start looking for those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the Bible is God saying there's a grand narrative.
SPEAKER_00: And it runs from Genesis all the way to the end, the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And we studied Revelation uh before we came to Genesis, and we made the point all along the way that if you if you pull a loose thread in one of those two ends, all of the pages between will crinkle because the loose thread is the historical or the the narrative, rather, the story of God's redeeming power.
SPEAKER_00: And that is good news.
SPEAKER_00: That that's actually great news, especially when you read a chapter like chapter 38 of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: So, with all of that in mind, let me read the chapter and then we'll try to draw a couple of points from it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, before we do, let me pray, Lord, uh, what we see not, I hope that you'll show us.
SPEAKER_00: What we know not, I hope that you'll teach us.
SPEAKER_00: What we have not, I pray that you would give to us, and what we are not, I pray that you would make us today.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when we last left off, um, we have Jacob, we have his twelve sons, we have him showing favoritism to Joseph, Joseph telling his brothers and his father about the dreams that he's had, and those dreams seem to be stories of uh his uh having everyone else bowing down to him and worshiping him, and he's sort of uh, you know, to them anyway, it seems like he's having visions of grandeur.
SPEAKER_00: And uh he ends up getting uh the the brothers grab him, throw him in a pit, and literally sell him to some slave traders that are coming through on their way to Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And it's Judah that we're gonna turn our attention to, and it's Judah that had the idea to sell Joseph as opposed to let him die in the pit, or as opposed to kill him before they threw him in the pit.
SPEAKER_00: It's Judah that said, we should profit off this guy.
SPEAKER_00: Let's make some money.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's the one that had that idea, and now we turn our attention to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Came about at that time that Judah departed from his brothers.
SPEAKER_00: He visited a certain Adulamite, whose name was Hira.
SPEAKER_00: Adulum would be a cave, uh, especially.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cave of Adulum down in south, southwest of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: If you were here for the women's stay treat, um, you studied Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_00: Kim walked you through that psalm a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And that psalm was actually written in the cave of Adulum.
SPEAKER_00: So it's down in an area headed toward the Philistine cities.
SPEAKER_00: And there David uh really fearful for his life because he's being chased by King Saul, who wants to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: He's being chased by the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he is having a real tough time, but yet still God inspires him in the middle of all of that horrible circumstance set of circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: God still inspired him to write Psalm 34, which promises things like the Lord draws near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Your broken heart, your crushed spirit, these are magnets to the God of the Bible who's rich in mercy and grace, eager, no matter how far you've strayed from him, to the cave of Abdullah or whoever, wherever, and wherever Judah goes, God's still in pursuit.
SPEAKER_00: And watch how this is revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: But he's down there visiting a certain Abdulamite whose name was Hira.
SPEAKER_00: Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shuah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Shua is the name of the Canaanite.
SPEAKER_00: Let me clarify that for you.
SPEAKER_00: The daughter remains nameless throughout the story here.
SPEAKER_00: So he sees a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua.
SPEAKER_00: He took her and he went into her.
SPEAKER_00: He literally took her and took her as his wife.
SPEAKER_00: And whether this is a rape or whether the father of this daughter, because back in these times, it was very traditional, very normal for a father to give his daughter away.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a thing where there was sort of like, you know, people are kind of going to different groups trying to see, see if they can find a spouse that they like or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't happening.
SPEAKER_00: This was more arranged marriages.
SPEAKER_00: And whether that's happening here or not, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But it's what's clear here is that Judah saw, he took what he wanted, and he went into her, and she conceived, we're told here in verse 3, and bore a son.
SPEAKER_00: And he, Judah, named him Ur.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of time passes here.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the birth of the child would take at least how many months?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, likely nine months.
SPEAKER_00: That's generally the way things would go.
SPEAKER_00: Well, verse 4 says she conceived again and bore a son and named him Onan.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so that's another nine.
SPEAKER_00: So we got a year and a half at least, probably more.
SPEAKER_00: And she bore still another son and named him Shela.
SPEAKER_00: And it was at Chezib that she bore him.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a place called Chezeb, and now three children, three sons, have been born to Judah and the nameless uh woman that he has married and or taken for a wife.
SPEAKER_00: Judah took a wife for Ur.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Ur is the firstborn of the son.
SPEAKER_00: And her name was Tamar.
SPEAKER_00: So now we're given the name.
SPEAKER_00: And this is interesting because the storyline is going to be more about what she and Judah, the way that they interact moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: However, verse 7 says that Ur, the firstborn son, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life, period.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I read that this week, and I've read this before.
SPEAKER_00: I've read it, I've taught through this book before, but it still kind of went like that, hit me right in the face.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it hits you in the face that way as well.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But uh he evidently, uh, while we're not given much in the way of specifics, he was evil in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Not evil in the sight of the culture, not evil in the sight of the cancel culture, not evil in the sight of uh the flow of culture, but he was evil in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so what happened is the Lord took his life.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, raise up offspring for your brother.
SPEAKER_00: And this is very, uh we read about this in Deuteronomy chapter 25, it's called the Leverite Law.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and Deuteronomy chapter 25 hasn't been written yet, the law hasn't been given yet, but sometimes the laws of God that are given, we find them woven into the culture and the traditions of life in ancient times, and that God's just affirming something that most people knew should happen in their particular time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in their day and time, women were completely helpless in the sense of they needed protection, they needed provision, and so their family context, very, very important to them.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about that even with Genesis chapter 34 with Dinah.
SPEAKER_00: And here we find that the promise that uh that Tamar would have a child who would later be able to take care of her when she got older and that sort of thing, that that promise is actually uh it's on Judah's mind, and he's telling Onan, go into your brother's wife, perform your duty as a brother and raise up offspring for her.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Onan knew that the offspring would not be his.
SPEAKER_00: So it came about that when he went into his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother.
SPEAKER_00: So you note his motive there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk about this in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of you have some questions, I would think, about this particular chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but he what he did, this is what's really important, verse 10, but what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And here it is again.
SPEAKER_00: So he, meaning the Lord, took his life also.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you know, pretty sobering to think of, to hear that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, Judah said to his daughter, Tamar, remain a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up, for he thought, I'm afraid that he too might die, like his brothers.
SPEAKER_00: So Tamar went and lived in her father's house.
SPEAKER_00: This would have been socially uh quite a rebuke to her, a rebuff to her.
SPEAKER_00: She's rejected.
SPEAKER_00: She has a cultural right, in a sense, to have been protected by Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And in some cases, it would have been Judah who should have stepped up to provide uh uh a legacy or a progeny for Ur, his firstborn son, if his other son, Shelah, was indeed so young that he could not do that.
SPEAKER_00: But none of that happens.
SPEAKER_00: Judah doesn't do that, um, Onan doesn't do that, and the Lord is it finds that displeasing in his sight.
SPEAKER_00: And now Judah is basically saying, you know, you know, he sees Tamar as the problem.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to send her away, and he wants her to go back to her father's house and live as a widow.
SPEAKER_00: Well, after a considerable time, Shea's daughter, the wife of Judah, died.
SPEAKER_00: And this isn't, again, this isn't Tamar dying, this is Judah's wife.
SPEAKER_00: And when the time of mourning was ended, Judah went up to his sheep shearers at Timna.
SPEAKER_00: He and his friend Hira the Adulamite.
SPEAKER_00: Timnah would have, the sheep shearing would have happened once or twice a year, would have been a great festive occasion, lots of adult beverages flowing, lots of festivities, all that sort of big party time.
SPEAKER_00: And his wife has just died.
SPEAKER_00: And who knows what he's, you know, what he's going through, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But he goes up to this big party time.
SPEAKER_00: And Timnah, by the way, will be mentioned later in the Old Testament as well, because Samson will go down to Timnah.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of mischief happens in Timnah, evidently.
SPEAKER_00: And it was told to Tamar, though, that behold, your father-in-law Judah is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.
SPEAKER_00: So she removed her widow's garments, covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself, and sat at the gateway of Enam, another village on the road to Timna.
SPEAKER_00: And she saw that Shelah had grown up, and she had not been given to him as a wife.
SPEAKER_00: This would have shocked her.
SPEAKER_00: She would have felt betrayed.
SPEAKER_00: She should have been given to Shemnah, or to Shelah as a wife, so that she could be protected in her old age.
SPEAKER_00: When Judah saw her, remember, he won't recognize her, she's wrapped in these other clothes.
SPEAKER_00: He thought she was a harlot, for she was covered, she had covered her face.
SPEAKER_00: So he turned aside to her by the road and said, Here now, let me come into you.
SPEAKER_00: For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, What will you give me that you may come into me?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Therefore, I will send you a kid from the flock, a young goat.
SPEAKER_00: She said, moreover, will you give me a pledge until you send it?
SPEAKER_00: Give me something as a sort of earnest.
SPEAKER_00: You know, against the fact that you're going to say, I, because you could have your way with me and leave, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I'd have no recourse.
SPEAKER_00: So give me something, some pledge.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, what pledge shall I give you?
SPEAKER_00: He says.
SPEAKER_00: She says, Your seal, your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is essentially the same thing as saying, your signet ring, the seal of your, you know, this is like your word.
SPEAKER_00: This is like your ID, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: Your staff, your signet ring.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, give me your driver's license and your American Express card.
SPEAKER_00: I want everything that would entitle me to the claim I have on you.
SPEAKER_00: And I want physical proof of it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so she says that's what she wants.
SPEAKER_00: He said, um uh uh he he then gave it to her, verse 18 tells us, and he went into her and she conceived by him.
SPEAKER_00: Now again, time is passing.
SPEAKER_00: She arose and departed and removed her veil and put on her widow's garments.
SPEAKER_00: Judah sent the goat, the young goat, the kid, by his friend, the Edulamite, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to get his pledge back, his ring, his staff, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And from to so he sent this friend to receive the pledge from the woman's hand, but he did not find her.
SPEAKER_00: He asked the men of her place, that little area, a name there, where's the temple prostitute who was by the road at a name?
SPEAKER_00: And they said, There has been no prostitute here.
SPEAKER_00: And right about now, that little servant is going, ro.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what am I gonna do now?
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is there's been no temple prostitute here.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: And Judah then says, Well, let her keep them, lest we become the laughing stock after all.
SPEAKER_00: I sent this goat, but did not, you didn't find her.
SPEAKER_00: And essentially, he's just concerned about his image publicly.
SPEAKER_00: He's he, let's downplay it, let's keep this on the DL, and I'll just let that stuff go.
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll make my a new ring and get a new staff and whatever.
SPEAKER_00: That that'll never come back to haunt me.
SPEAKER_00: Ha ha.
SPEAKER_00: And and so uh, because after all, we didn't find her, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It was about three months later, verse 24 says that Judah was informed, hey, your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, she's also with child by harlotry.
SPEAKER_00: Then Judah said, Bring her out, let her be burned.
SPEAKER_00: It was while she was being brought out that she sent to her father-in-law, saying, I am with child by the man to whom these things belong.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Please examine and see whose signet ring and cords and staff are these.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I didn't fulfill my familial responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, though, that he doesn't say I took advantage of her, I treated her like property.
SPEAKER_00: I thought she was a commodity.
SPEAKER_00: That I could just be a consumer in this relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And he did not have relations with her again, and that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: The narrator is telling us that.
SPEAKER_00: Something changes a little bit in the disposition of his heart toward her.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it came about at the time she was giving birth, and behold, there were twins in her womb.
SPEAKER_00: And we've seen twins born before, haven't we, already in Genesis?
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, it took place while she was giving birth.
SPEAKER_00: One put out a hand, midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, This one came out first.
SPEAKER_00: But it came about as he, that first one, drew back his hand, that behold, his brother came out.
SPEAKER_00: And then she said, What a breach you have made for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And she named him Perez, and that means breaking out.
SPEAKER_00: That's what his name means.
SPEAKER_00: Afterward, his brother came out, who had the scarlet thread on his hand.
SPEAKER_00: And he was named Zara, which means scarlet.
SPEAKER_00: It can also mean thread, an appropriate name given all that happens, the end of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a chapter.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so um again, I don't know if you were raised in the church or not.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you grew up going to children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've been in youth group.
SPEAKER_00: I have no clue what the flannel graph or the youth's youth group skit would look like of this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Bella, Bella and Jamie and Ryan are gonna have to work pretty hard to come up with those, I think, in our church.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't pay them enough to do that kind of work.
SPEAKER_00: Um, anyway, wow, there's stuff to learn though, isn't there, here?
SPEAKER_00: Um, why is this chapter even in the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: You know, I bet there aren't that many churches around the world today studying Genesis 38.
SPEAKER_00: I know, because I every time I'm getting ready to do a Bible study, you know, I read eight or nine commentaries on each passage.
SPEAKER_00: And I usually go online and see whose stuff I can steal, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I listen to my favorite preachers.
SPEAKER_00: And usually I'll go to some of these sites that have like, you know, like 50 different preachers all at one website, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And for Genesis 38, you know, it's like if you can look at chapter 37, there might be like 20 messages on it.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to Genesis 38, look on some of those sites, you're lucky to find one or two messages on Genesis 38.
SPEAKER_00: People are like backing away from the car.
SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the, you know, what they're doing with this, but I think there are some lessons, and I certainly uh don't want to dodge the realities that God wants us to face sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: And I realize that we're a church that is regathering after a long, difficult couple of years.
SPEAKER_00: And you, as people who come to a church, may have been coming here hoping and starving for some something.
SPEAKER_00: And and uh I I can only say that God in his providence has brought us to Genesis 38 today.
SPEAKER_00: And what can we learn?
SPEAKER_00: I think there's some really good lessons to learn here.
SPEAKER_00: I'll throw these up on the screen pretty quick and make just a few comments about each.
SPEAKER_00: First, the uh importance of establishing and maintaining a family context of commitment to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So, parents, the fact is you're passing down spiritual disposition, whether or not you intend to, uh, for good or for bad.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not married, but you have coworkers or roommates, uh, you are modeling or neighbors, you are modeling a spiritual disposition for those within your sphere of influence.
SPEAKER_00: I seek to persuade each of us today that we're still here on the planet for a reason that's bigger than just to get a paycheck.
SPEAKER_00: We're still here on the planet for a reason that's bigger than our hopes and dreams.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're here on the planet for a telos, a purpose that is actually massive.
SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
SPEAKER_00: It's bigger than you might imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because God's thoughts are not our thoughts, God's ways are not our ways, his are so much higher than ours.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to use you, he wants to use me, he wants to use all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Inconsistent though we might be broken, though we might be battered, though we might be victim, though we might be victimized that we might be.
SPEAKER_00: And the story of Tamar, the story of Ur and Onan and Shela, these are important stories.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to miss them.
SPEAKER_00: The importance of establishing and maintaining a family context of Commitment to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What would have happened if Judah hadn't been so fascinated with Canaanite culture as to want to drift down that way?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and he so casually sees, wants, and takes.
SPEAKER_00: And um what would have happened if he had stayed closer to Yahweh and leaned into that relationship with God a little bit more?
SPEAKER_00: Um, what would Ur have learned?
SPEAKER_00: What would Onan have learned?
SPEAKER_00: What would Sheila have learned?
SPEAKER_00: What would Tamar have not had to go through?
SPEAKER_00: Lots of questions and lots of hypotheticals, I agree, but I think that at the very least we can learn that there is a bit of a lesson here for us about establishing and maintaining, maintenance, disciplining a family context of commitment to the Lord or a friend's context of commitment to the Lord or whatever that might be, okay, for whatever your sphere of influence is.
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody even know that you're a person of faith?
SPEAKER_00: Or do they just think, yep, you're a really nice southerner, man?
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what do people think?
SPEAKER_00: You know, nowadays, what do people think when you go to that building up on the, you know, the old convent building up there and you sing these songs?
SPEAKER_00: Are they just religious nuts up here?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, or do they just think we're crazy because we believe something still?
SPEAKER_00: And that we believe there is a God still, even though we get ridiculed publicly all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Uh people are attempting very much to move God out of the way in our culture and higher uh institutions of higher learning, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: No longer in pursuit of truth, just in pursuit of all kinds of things that I think are kind of trivial, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we need to be living this out in such a way that we are establishing and maintenanceing a context of commitment to the Lord because that is going to get passed along to those who are watching you.
SPEAKER_00: There are people watching you, there are people that are watching me.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing I learned here anyway is the divine prerogative to define evil and determine when God will put an end to it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just, you know, unfortunately, those very sobering stories of Ur and Onan.
SPEAKER_00: It's God who gets to define what is evil.
SPEAKER_00: In our day and age, we've been, all of us have been programmed and influenced to believe that it's you as an individual that gets to determine what's right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Or it's me as an individual.
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the nice way that that's done is to tell you that the whole world is, and to make get all of us to be thinking that the whole world is about us and our story.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of there's a lot of truth to the fact that we we need help, some of us, with with our self-understanding.
SPEAKER_00: I understand that that I'm not talking about the healthy version of that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just that we've gotten to the point now where there's this cacophony of competing autobiographies.
SPEAKER_00: And now I want what I want, and I want it now, and you want what you want, and you want it now, and we're all walking over top of each other and treating one another as some kind of commodity.
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually not new, that's been going on for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Judah treated Tamar as a commodity, as he casually engaged her in a transactional relationship when it came to sex, to the act of sex.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this uh particular passage has been uh abused in some ways.
SPEAKER_00: Some people, you know, who are preachers and the like will say it's about birth control.
SPEAKER_00: Others will say it's about masturbation.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I just said the M word.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's really not about either one of those.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's very clearly told us there by the narrator that the reason God was upset with Onan was that he refused Tamar a familial right that she had to be protected, to have a child.
SPEAKER_00: And he refused that, and he was casual about his human sexuality, just as Judah was casual, trivialized human sexuality.
SPEAKER_00: So don't hear me saying God doesn't have anything to say about human sexuality.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: Do hear me saying this isn't about birth control or self-gratification.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: There are other passages where we can talk about things like lust and all that sort of thing, but this isn't about those two things.
SPEAKER_00: Umerogative to define what is evil and then to draw a line when God seems to think it's necessary.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I do want to know that I do want to remind us of this because all the way in Revelation we studied this.
SPEAKER_00: There's coming a day when God intends to set everything that's broken and wrong right.
SPEAKER_00: And that's called justice.
SPEAKER_00: And if you and I were to ask for a show of hands, if if you want justice, if you believe in justice, most of us would put our hands up because we believe that there ought to be a thing called justice, but most of us want for ourselves, we want grace.
SPEAKER_00: For others, we want justice.
SPEAKER_00: But we do want justice, and that's we're joining God in the way he thinks about this too, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: God loves justice, God hates evil because it's destructive to his creation, which was created to bring him glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we are trivial about our human sexuality, or we abuse others, or we're in some way uh embracing and relaying or reflecting racial prejudices or religious prejudices, we are dishonoring God.
SPEAKER_00: And one day, though, he intends to set it all right.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the book of Revelation tells us, see?
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm one of the crazy guys that says, I'm excited about God's justice.
SPEAKER_00: That one day he will put an end to evil once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: I'm eager for his righteous judgment to come.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and some people don't understand that because they can't think about the divine prerogative.
SPEAKER_00: They can't put that into their heads.
SPEAKER_00: He created it, he knows how it works best, he knows what the context ought to be for the enjoyment of it, and he's the one that determines what's evil and what's not evil.
SPEAKER_00: It's not up to the individual, because then we just get the cacophony of competing autobiographies, and we step on each other and use each other.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, the grace of God in being interested in us, even when we've not been interested in him.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we get a lot of those chapters in the Bible, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: People who aren't interested in God.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what our world in our day and time is filled with?
SPEAKER_00: People who aren't interested in God.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Some of them might be in this room right now, some of them might be in buildings like this all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: They're interested in checking a cultural box by going to a thing called church, but they're not really interested in God.
SPEAKER_00: And that there's a huge difference.
SPEAKER_00: But look at the grace of God on display here in chapter 38.
SPEAKER_00: In spite of all the darkness of 38, we know that 38 is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle of redemption history.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we see is a God who, in spite of 38, is still working out his plan.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, I don't see that in 38.
SPEAKER_00: And I say, I do.
SPEAKER_00: It's at the very end of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: The name is Perez.
SPEAKER_00: And guess who Perez is?
SPEAKER_00: He's an ancestor to King David, who's an ancestor to a guy named Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so through the line of Perez, the unlikely second one, without this scarlet cord around his wrist saying he was firstborn.
SPEAKER_00: The unlikely one, the son of an incestuous, immoral, illicit sexual relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That's the one through whom the line of Messiah is gonna come.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you blow our minds.
SPEAKER_00: Using people that no one else would use for your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Using even abused people for your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Using the most unlikely people for your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Grace of God and being interested in us even when we're not even thinking about Him.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth, how many double standards are, or how easy double standards are to adopt when we are judging others?
SPEAKER_00: Has that ever happened?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been caught in this double standard thing?
SPEAKER_00: You know, and this is what happens here with Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Let her bring her out here, let's burn her to death.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but look at these, look at the whose ring is this?
SPEAKER_00: Whose staff is this?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is total duplicity, that's duplicity on display, right?
SPEAKER_00: And even Judah crumbles a little and says, she's more righteous than I am.
SPEAKER_00: And he needed to.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we see he needed to.
SPEAKER_00: We we we recognize that as we read this whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: But what about me?
SPEAKER_00: What about you?
SPEAKER_00: How easy double standards are to adopt when we're judging others.
SPEAKER_00: I can see the, you know, the speck in your eye, but I got a board in my eye, as Jesus would describe it later, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is just completely uh a sort of reality, I think, that we all have to struggle with.
SPEAKER_00: Fifthly and finally, how God intends to accomplish his purposes, even if it means he chooses and uses people in events that seem undesirable and unlikely all along the way.
SPEAKER_00: You know, reading through some of the stuff that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and now Judah have done or had done, doesn't it make you wonder at some point why does God keep putting up with them?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you, I mean, I've I've I've thought that multiple times.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, well, if he can use them, you know, and I'm really kind of doing the self-righteous thing myself when I do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm better than them, right?
SPEAKER_00: So if he can use them, maybe he can, surely he can use, you know, and I'm watching the little meter go up there like that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and and this is again the the grace of God uh at work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Because um, as as uh, and most of you have read the Chronicles of Narnia, I know that you have.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you, if you got to the silver chair other, ever got to the silver chair, um, and we read this aloud uh over the summer.
SPEAKER_00: It's really funny to read through these things again as adults, but to hear Aslan say to Jill once, you would not have called to me unless I had already been calling to you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just mind-blowing to me.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God at work in the life of broken people, abused people, unlikely people, people chronically addicted to their own stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and he uses us.
SPEAKER_00: That's just so amazing to me how God would intend to accomplish his purposes that way.
SPEAKER_00: And that, my friends, is because he is indeed sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: And in spite of what you walk away with reading chapter 38 of Genesis, or some of you would be familiar with the book of Ecclesiastes, and some of you would go, yeah, I gotta back away from that car.
SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a that's one of the things, all is vanity, all is vanity, all is vanity, all is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the book, some of you go, all is vanity, you know, and uh, and you just want to go out and you know end it all.
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's not the point of that book, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite books to teach through uh in the entire Bible, and our our teachings on uh Ecclesiastes are online for you.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what God does, in spite of all of the way we may feel in life and all of the crazy going on around us.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what God intends to do.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible's promise, all the way running from the beginning to the end, is that this is all headed somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: And that one day indeed he intends to set things right.
SPEAKER_00: And he has the actual, he can back it up with it's not just wishful thinking.
SPEAKER_00: He actually can bring it about.
SPEAKER_00: How do I know that?
SPEAKER_00: People like Perez continue to show me, people like Judah continue to show me, people that battered and bruised like Tamar continue to show me that God is moving and working through human history all the way to Jesus, they all point forward to and find their fulfillment in Jesus, and he's the one that one day intends to come back and set things right and has the power to do it.
SPEAKER_00: So let's trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you do that?
SPEAKER_00: What would keep you from doing that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you think something else, something trivial, something temporal could be the answer or the solution, but it's not.
SPEAKER_00: We need outside help.
SPEAKER_00: God has come on the run with rescue and a redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: And his name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just close with a couple quotes.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, again, he's makes so much sense here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, uh, as regards my own sins, it's a safe bet, though not a certainty, that the excuses are not really so good as I think.
SPEAKER_00: As regards other men's sins against me, it's a safe bet, though not a certainty, that their excuses are better than I think.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: What if we all thought that way about it?
SPEAKER_00: And instead of reacting when someone treats us wrong or is mean to us or forgets us or abuses us in some way, instead of that, what if we see our lives completely in the hands of a sovereign God who's working all of human history, even the even the chapter 38 stuff, he's working it all for his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: What if we all had that kind of perspective about everything?
SPEAKER_00: It would change not only the way we view living, but the way we view suffering as well.
SPEAKER_00: It would change even the way we view dying, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If we really believed that.
SPEAKER_00: John Stott, for the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God.
SPEAKER_00: The essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
SPEAKER_00: That's just brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be.
SPEAKER_00: God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.
SPEAKER_00: Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone, but God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.
SPEAKER_00: This is all he did in the personal work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Even on the cross, Jesus died for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: We say it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: He died for my sins.
SPEAKER_00: He died for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: He put himself in my place.
SPEAKER_00: So that he who knew no sin became sin, 2 Corinthians 5.21, so that I might know the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and so that you might know that as well.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of a savior is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: He's this kind.
SPEAKER_00: He's gentle and lowly Savior, as many of you have read.
SPEAKER_00: A book by that title named Dean Ortland, who says this.
SPEAKER_00: What it elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin, but whether the sinner comes to him.
SPEAKER_00: Just stop for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: You're here today, you've done X, Y, Z, you know it, you're well aware of it.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are bruised and battered over it.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are bruised and battered over someone else's doing something to you.
SPEAKER_00: In either case, are you not looking for the tenderness of a savior who would receive you no matter what?
SPEAKER_00: Whether you are Judah or Tamar, Ur even.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever our offense, He deals, God Jesus deals with us.
SPEAKER_00: If we never come to Him, we will experience a judgment so fierce it will be like a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth at us.
SPEAKER_00: Read about that in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: If we do come to Him, as fierce as His lion-like judgment would have been against us, so deep will be His lamb-like tenderness for us.
SPEAKER_00: Again, who wouldn't want that?
SPEAKER_00: Don't know if you're wrestling with a moral issue today.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you can't seem to think of a way to deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Get in the scriptures, talk with other believers, get on your knees before the Lord, lift up the empty hands of faith and receive from him, cry out to him.
SPEAKER_00: Go to him is the point from this quote.
SPEAKER_00: Don't not go to him, go to him.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you have done that would cause him to say, get out, or I reject.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: You come to him, and he will in no wise cast you out.
SPEAKER_00: These lessons from the past, even the darker lessons, can renew our awareness of our need for God's redemption.
SPEAKER_00: They can awaken our sense that something is wrong in the world, including right in here in my heart and your hearts, and it needs fixing.
SPEAKER_00: Hope arises as we study scriptures, even like this, because they tell us God has done something about it.
SPEAKER_00: And he has put on offer this good news that one day he will set everything right in the person and work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why not turn to him today?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Rough as it may be, uh difficult as it may be to understand, and some of the questions that we might have about it, but I pray that we don't miss the big picture, because the big picture is the big picture.
SPEAKER_00: You in pursuit of us, even if we've been running from you.
SPEAKER_00: Please, Lord, uh seize us with your great affection.
SPEAKER_00: Cause us to in faith turn in repentance to you and receive this amazing grace that you offer in Christ Jesus and give us the hope that one day you will indeed set all things right.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name for