February 13, 2026 - Genesis 38 & Psalm 34

We trace the messy story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 to show how God preserves His promise through repentance and providence, then anchor our hearts in Psalm 34’s call to taste and see the Lord’s goodness. We close with practical comfort: God sees, hears, delivers, draws near, and saves.

Reading Providence Backwards by Austin Duncan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T383lbahRQs&t=14s

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org. Keep reading. Keep growing. God’s Word is a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path.

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome And Reading Overview
• 0:28 Genesis 38 Read Aloud
• 4:11 Psalm 34 Read Aloud
• 6:21 Why Genesis 38 Is Here
• 8:51 Judah’s Failures And A Turn Toward Repentance
• 12:43 Promise And Providence Through Judah’s Line
• 14:07 Psalm 34: Taste And See
• 17:23 God Sees, Hears, Delivers, Draws Near
• 19:58 Resource Recommendation And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with God's word lighting the way. I'm Josiah Smith joined by Tyler Sanborn. Today is Friday, February 13th, 2026. Listen attently to God's written word. Genesis 38. It happened at that time that Juna went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adulamite, whose name was Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went into her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name 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 Sheila. Judah was in Chezeb when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 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. But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. 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 Sheila my son grows up, for he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheep shears, he and his friend Hira the Adulamite. And when Tamar was told, Your father in law was 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 sat at the entrance to Anayam, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Sheila was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 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. She said, What will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock. And she said, If you give me a pledge until you send it. He said, What pledge shall I give you? She replied, Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand. So he gave them to her and went into her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away, taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood. When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adulamite 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 Anayam at the roadside? And they said, No cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her. 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. You see, I sent this young goat, and you did not find her. About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality. 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, I am pregnant. And she said, Please identify who these are, the signet and the cord and the staff. Then Judah identified them and said, She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Sheila, and he did not know her again. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, This one came out first. But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out, and she said, What a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore his name was called Perez. Afterward his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zara. Psalm thirty-four.

SPEAKER_01: 4:13

I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and his ears towards their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. Keep his he keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

SPEAKER_00: 6:21

Now Genesis thirty-eight does have some, from our perspective, very strange things going on. We have leverate marriage, which is something that is not a part of the context that we find ourselves in, where if a brother died, it was a responsibility of a surviving brother to marry uh the widow and provide an offspring. Um so things that we aren't really familiar with or things that we wouldn't practice as uh customary here, at least in the West in America. Uh, and then of course, there's uh just the issue of uh Tamar and sleeping with her father-in-law and a lot of things happening that are um maybe uncomfortable and and feel somewhat random from our perspective. Why in the world, in the middle of Genesis, which we've been talking about, the promises of God, the provision of God, why do we have this chapter in Genesis? And it seems to kind of interrupt even the story of Joseph, right? We had the story beginning in Genesis 37 of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers and actually just the murderous intent that they had originally, but then um Simeon was able to uh swade them from not killing them and throwing him into a pit instead, and all of that story. Then we have a, you know, it feels like a random break before we really get into the meat of the Joseph story that perhaps is more familiar to us. Tyler, what what are you what are your thoughts? Why why do we have this random chapter in Genesis?

SPEAKER_01: 7:51

I'm looking at this and I can I can maybe connect it to just you're watching a show and you just get this random commercial that has nothing to do with the story, and then you dive right back in. And uh I I look at the beginning of of chapter 38 uh and my mind is drawn towards uh towards the sons that died that are wicked. And I'm I'm thinking about um God's people marrying and staying with God's people, and the the wife that um the wife that Judah selects for himself is uh a Canaanite. And the the offspring, as described in Genesis 38, the two out of the three brothers die, the Lord caused them to die because they are wicked. And and that's a big exclamation part mark in my mind of like, okay, um you're you're reading the narrative and you're like, well, is the third son gonna die too? Is it just like strike one, strike two, strike three, you're gone. Judah, learn learn your lesson. That my my mind is is kind of rattled in the sense of like, what is this this seems like a soap opera? This seems like some kind of crazy like reality show that we you might find um on on a TV today, and it it it draws our minds to um just how just the chaotic nature of of the family of God throughout the book of Genesis to this point.

SPEAKER_00: 9:11

Yeah, and I would say in my mind, the the illustration to help you conceptualize why Genesis 38 is where it is, is kind of like a flashback in a movie, where if you're in a movie, sometimes the characters can have a flashback to something that happened previously or to remind you of something that happened previously that is intended to give you clarity as to what's happening in the present. And Genesis 38 is a flashback to the garden in a lot of ways. In Genesis 3.15, we've talked about it a lot throughout the book of Genesis. There was a promise that God made that there was gonna be an offspring of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent. And so this chapter serves as a flashback where we're being reminded, oh, yeah, there was a promise that was made, and it's gonna come through a specific family and a specific line. And so then we're looking at Genesis 38 with that context, and we're going, okay, how is God going to fulfill that promise? And so you could think of Genesis 38 as the providence of God to preserve his promise. Now, the providence of God, if you're not familiar with that term or that theological idea, basically, just to make it simple, it's when God sees to accomplishing his purpose, right? Uh, so you could translate providence as to see to it. Think of it that way. God is seeing to his purposes, his intentions, and his plans. So we see the providence of God, God seeing to keeping the promise that he made in Genesis 3.15. So the promise of God, the providence of God to preserve his promise. And it's again the question of who is the seed gonna come from? Where is the line? Uh and we're uh of course in this chapter we see that that Reuben gets disqualified because he slept with one of Jacob's concubines. That was back in Genesis 35. Simeon gets disqualified because he went on a murderous rampage because his sister, Dinah, was uh defiled. And uh so then we're left with Judah. And Judah is not a walking picture of faith. I'll tell you that, because he does not honor Tamar, he actually ignores the responsibility and the promise that he made to her uh of his third child when he becomes of age. He was saying, go back to your father's house, live with him for a time until uh the third child becomes old enough, and he ignores that. And so uh we we see Judah kind of on shaky ground, but throughout this narrative and even the twists and turns of of Judah sleeping with Tamar and getting uh her pregnant and all of the strange sort of twists and turns from our perspective, ultimately we see Judah respond to all of that with a kind of repentance that we don't see talked about with Reuben and Simeon. A repentance and just a you could say even a change of heart uh when all of this comes to light, when it's found out that Tamar was in fact pregnant by him. Uh, of course, his initial response was let's let's burn her, let's put her to death, let's punish her. But when he finds out that it was ultimately him, he says, Surely she is more righteous than I. So there's an acknowledgement uh of his wrong, there's an acknowledgement of uh the promise that he did not keep to her, and there seems to be a kind of a walking out of that repentance moving forward. And of course, if you fast forward to the book of Revelation or in other parts of scripture, we see that the lion of the tribe of Judah is the Messiah, is uh the offspring of the woman. So Judah becomes a prominent uh figure in this the scriptures, a prominent tribe, and the one through whom ultimately uh the Messiah would come. So we see Judah um being the means by which God providentially sees to preserving his promise. So Genesis 38, though it does have some strange twists and turns, and though there are some cultural things with Leverett marriage that perhaps we don't understand, you should view it as God seeing to the keeping and preserving of his promise, of an offspring that would come uh from the seed of the woman, from Eve, that would crush the head of the serpent and ultimately bring a salvation uh to all. And it's even interesting to see Tamar's sort of shrewdness in this whole thing uh to ask for the cord and the signet and the staff, and and ultimately uh she is rescued because she does that and she asks of that. And obviously, God is involved in that and protecting her. Uh, but that's that's Genesis 38, though it is strange. Uh, it's the providence of God to preserve his promise, to see to it that there would be an offspring that would come through ultimately the line of Judah, as we see uh Jesus referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah. Now, as we transition to Psalm 34, Tyler, what are what are some of your just thoughts or maybe some of the things that you were encouraged by from Psalm 34?

SPEAKER_01: 14:16

Yeah, I I'm looking at Psalm 34 and my my mind first when I first read this, I'm like, okay, I'm I'm reading the header, taste and see that the Lord is good. And then uh next to the chapter in my Bible, uh, I have Psalm 34 of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech. And I'm like, okay, like this is referencing something. I need to go find that out. So I went to 1 Samuel chapter 21 and I read it, and I think you should too, because it might give you some clarity. Um, David essentially is acting like a madman in order to escape. He's on the run from Saul uh and he's before the king uh of Gath, and like Pharaoh would be to the Egyptians, Abimelech is a general title for the name of a king. Uh, and this king sends him out because this king says, Isn't this this David that they sing about? Like, who's this wild guy? I already have I already have enough crazies in my house already. I don't need another one. Get him out of here. Uh, and he sends them away. So then then here's the response uh from David uh as God continues to spare him and preserve him as he's on the run uh from King Saul. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be on my mouth. And and the the line that that comes to my mind, and I I did a little food dive, uh foodie. Um I know foodies out there, Pastor Josiah. I'm not one of them. Uh I know that I like crunchy things. I I'm a texture guy when it comes to food, but verse eight says, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Uh, blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. And and there's different ways that we can experience life. Um, God has given us uh senses to experience life in in it all its fullness, and to to taste and experience God's goodness for me is to you need to be walking with the Lord to do that. You need to be in his presence to understand what about God uh that David is talking about, what is good about him, and he's he's uh sharing these these thoughts with us, these phrases, and um I love how he transitions in the middle here. He trans transitions to to speaking to our the the young uh or the youth, and uh um he's he's encouraging the children in verse 11 come, oh children, listen to me. Let me tell you, let me tell you about this God that we serve, and I will teach you to fear him. I will share why he deserves your uh your allegiance, your respect, your honor. Um, and he's instructing them, children. God is honored when you keep your tongue from evil. God is honored and praise when you tell the truth, and when you turn away from evil, when you do good, and when you seek peace and pursue it.

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

Yeah, and I I think even those next few verses from 15 to 18 are such encouraging truths for in the context of these children being taught, these sort of basic truths that again we can so easily forget. But in verse 15, it says the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous. That's just such a profound encouragement that God sees. El Roy, the God who sees, He sees you in your circumstances, he sees you where you're at, both in an accountability sense where he knows your weaknesses, he knows your sin struggles, uh, but also in uh an assurance type of way where he sees and knows your hurts, he sees and knows uh your pains, and that's a great encouragement and a truth that we need to hold on to. And then he goes on and says, in his ears uh toward their cry. So God sees, he not only sees and knows, he also hears. There's a sense of care communicated by that. When you feel listened to, when you feel heard, uh there's often great comfort that comes from that, even if there's no solution offered. Feeling heard can often bring great comfort. And this passage in Psalm 34 tells us, yeah, God sees us, God hears us, uh, and even goes on to talk about in verse 17 when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears again and delivers them out of their trouble. So he sees, he hears, he delivers. In verse 18, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, he draws near to those who are hurting and saves the crushed in spirit. God saves. And so there's so many great basic truths uh that we we need to cling to, remind ourselves of, put sticky notes on our mirrors, right? A three by five card that you put in your bathroom. I mean, whatever you need to do to remind yourself that God sees, he hears, he delivers, he draws near, he saves, uh, and and all of this under the umbrella of taste and see that the Lord is good. Uh why is he good? Because he sees, uh, he he hears, he cares, he provides, he rescues, he draws near. Uh, and taste and see just the wonder of those truths that the God of the universe, who upholds the universe by the word of his power, would take even a moment of his time uh to consider us is unfathomable. But that's the grace of God. And we see those things said here. So those are just again the basic truths of scripture that it seems like the biblical authors and the biblical characters they they needed reminding of uh constantly. And so I'm thinking if they're writing about it constantly, then we need to hear about it constantly. God sees, he hears, he delivers, he draws near, he saves and taste and see that the Lord is good. Now, as we wrap up here, I want to give you just a resource specifically for Genesis 38. There's a really good sermon that I heard uh a few years back on Genesis 38. It's by Austin Duncan. It's called Reading Providence Backwards. And I will put the link of that in the description of this episode. But if you're interested in hearing a little bit more uh exposition and exegesis of uh Genesis 38, that's gonna be a good resource for you. And I remember hearing this uh again a few years back and being greatly encouraged uh by it. So again, reading Providence Backwards by Austin Duncan. You'll find the link for that sermon in the description. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass bible sv.org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.