We have read the first chapter of Proverbs this morning. We might have read many another chapter in Proverbs, especially in those great first ten chapters of this remarkable book of divine wisdom. We have read this chapter for the light which it sheds upon two portions of the book of which we are not likely to read in public. I suppose I'm old-fashioned. I don't like to read through the 38th and 39th chapters of Genesis in public. I know that it contains behavior on the part of sinful people which It's very, very common in the world, especially today, and it's thought nothing of. But some of us are a wee bit old-fashioned, shall we say, about these things. We've still got a sense of delicacy and propriety. Therefore, I take these two chapters, Genesis 38 and 39, as read, such that Those who are not familiar with them will find a quiet spot sometime today and read them through. They'll do you good, especially in the light of anything we may have to say about them this morning. Genesis 38 contains the shocking story of Judah's shameful conduct with his daughter-in-law Tamar. provides for us yet another ingredient in the story of redemption. Chapter 39 records the shocking story of a woman who seeks to tempt Joseph from the path of purity and rectitude, Potiphar's wife. The story is enlightened and inspires us wonderfully with the uprightness and the resolute setting aside of all temptation of that kind by God's youthful servant, Joseph. In the midst of appalling dangers and abominations, which must have revolted his pure soul. Here are two brothers, Judah and Joseph, in consecutive chapters, the one of whom advertises his shame and wickedness and his conduct, and the other shows Paul that he should be incarnate in the family of Joseph and Mary and be born at Bethlehem. the Saviour of mankind. The lady in the story of Judah's shame, she was far more sinned against than sinning, was Tamar. Her name appears in the genealogy of the Saviour in the first chapter of Matthew. There are about four women who appear in Christ's genealogy. There's Tamar, there is Ruth, there is Mary, there is another. Very, very significant names they are. the Lord would choose to be born of an ancestry which included Judah's shameful conduct with Tamar, his daughter-in-law. But then you see, our race is a sinful race, and the Lord of glory, if he wished to be as indeed was the divine counsel and decree and wisdom, must necessarily be born of a long line of sinful people, else he couldn't be born at all. It is his love for our race which brought him, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. His identification with our sin was sinless. His readiness to bear the curse, the shame, the loathe of our guilt. He had no guilt of his own because the spotless Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. We want to weigh this morning some of the ethical values of the accounts which are given to us in Genesis 38 and 39. It all has to do with redemption. Perhaps we evangelical people don't lay that much weight upon the ethical values, that is, the values of conduct and discretion and behaviour. that we ought to do. Possibly for that reason, the conversion of many is only a shallow thing. It doesn't run as deeply as it ought. For lessons in humility, in meekness, in purity, in right conduct, right behaviour towards our fellow men have a great deal to do with redemption. Read the book of Proverbs and you will find that God is intensely interested in ethical behavior. Therefore let us look at this story. Joseph's family rejected. Sinful Judas chosen as the vehicle of the promised sea. How revealing. is all this of the nature of divine grace and of the sin of man. Tamar the Canaaniteess becomes an ancestress of King David and hence of Christ. And this story in Genesis 38 which I hope you will read if you are not familiar with it when you get home. This story is brought into the record not just to tell us how sinful a man was Judah For how sinful is the human race, and how sinful and depraved is your nature and mine, and how none of us dare take liberties with it. How sinful the human race of which the Holy Lord Himself came, and descended of a long line of wicked men, to redeem by His grace the fallen human family. great judgments and great names are here in the Lord's genealogy. The geography of redemption ranges over a wide historic field of human nature. And you see the hand of God, even in the sin of man, guiding and directing the stream of his purposes to bring everything ultimately to the grand conclusion. of his redeeming love and mercy and revelation of himself in salvation. Judas' sin takes place in a very significant redemptive region. He is actually in his own country, though he knows it not. His crime takes place in that province of Palestine which in later generations, in the days of Joshua, was divided up for Judah. It contained Jerusalem. It contained Bethlehem. It contained the city of David that was to be. It contained the cave of Adullam. where David, when he was despised and rejected like his greater son who was to appear, found refuge from the murderous hand of Saul, and gathered around him a band of outcasts, of men who were fugitives from justice, who were outcasts from society, like the Church of Jesus Christ became, because that's what we all are and were. and moulded by David's example and hand and skill into one of the greatest armies that the world ever saw. Full of mighty men of valor, princes of Israel they became, notable men on the pages of history, just as our Lord Jesus Christ is able to take of the sinner from the dunghill and set him amongst the princes and make us all kings and priests unto God and his Father forever and forever. Judah is actually in this country the territory which God designed to give to his descendants. Of the tribe of Judah, Adulam where David found refuge in his cave. and assembled there his force of fugitive men. You notice in the first verse of Genesis 38, it came to pass at that time that Judah went down from his brethren and turned into a certain Adonai whose name was Hira. It was there that all the mischief took place. We note also in verse 6 of this chapter or rather verse 5, that Judah was at a place called Kessin, where his third son Shelah was born. And this same place, now known as Aksin, appears as one of the cities given to the tribe of Judah in the days of Joshua. It also reappears, along with Adunam, in the prophetic judgments of Micah the prophet. in his first chapter, which you can look up again when you get home, and you'll find it at Durham, and Akzib, or Kazib, is there mentioned in a special prophetic picture. The whole scheme is designed by providence to warn the earthly people of the destruction of the original family of Judah, the setting aside of the Davidic dynasty, And from the house of the Gentiles to which Tamar was relegated should emerge the deliverer to indicate that Christ would not be king of earthly Israel only, but of the whole world of believing people. The old covenant set aside to make way for the new. And then twins were born to Tamar. in this chapter. They were born with a very special destiny, the twin boys of Tamar, their significant birth. He who was first became the last and the last became the first. You read the record. Tamar's first born Zara takes back his hand and Ferees emerges the progenitor of the Messiah, to indicate that the old monarchy is doomed to be set aside to make way for the spiritual king and the spiritual Israel. Akzib, where Shelah was born, means alive and is so used by Micah in his prophecy. The true Adonai shall come, even him who is the truth who is the glory of Israel to redeem and reign. These little notices concerning the geography and the topography of the place of Palestine where Christ was born show the careful arrangement of divine providence of all affairs even evil things to produce in the end the good which God has in mind. Not that God is involved in any sense in the evil of men's behavior, but that in spite of it, he works through in magnificent control of all things, good and bad, even of the devil himself and his kingdom, to bring to pass the overthrow of evil in the end, by his own submission to it. His own being overcome by it as touching the body as he gave himself to suffering and to death. This we see right throughout the Bible and you cannot understand your Bible or these individual records and chapters which seem at first sight to have no other purpose than merely to advertise somebody else's sin. You cannot understand the Bible until you understand the divine purpose which runs through it all and nothing is recorded merely as an event but because of the lessons which it conveys in the preparation of heart for the full revelation of God's wisdom. So it is in the mysterious counsel of God that all things are directed to this one end The Bible is no ordinary book. In it can be traced an inspiration all the more remarkable because in such details as these, in Genesis 38 and 39, great events beyond the thought of these original actors in the drama, great events beyond their in these simple and tragic annals of our race are foreshadowed. And it makes us think at times, what must it have been to have heard Paul and Apollos expound the Old Testament? And use it all to show how Christ was coming through it and how he was dwelling in the of all these events that his eternal wisdom was shaping the course of sinful man until the moment of his own appearance. Now although the prime object of this chapter is to trace the ancestry of David and show the origins of the most important of the twelve tribes, there are many remarkable and valued lessons. There is Judas' friendship with Hierarch the Adulamite, a friendship with the heathen which led him into the practice of Canaanitish depravity, and a warning to all of us that friendship with this world is enmity against God. Our mind and heart soon incline to the manners and the ways of those with whom we mix. We sometimes mix with them on the television screen and elsewhere. We ought to be careful of what we see and what we listen to. We might be keeping very bad company and let nobody think they're immune from the evil influences of these things. The use of foul language, the use of bad manners, the nastiness and the evils which are portrayed. They're not for the saint of God. We can't play with these things and expect to be untouched by them. Friendship of this world is enmity against God and the mind and heart soon inclined to the manners and ways of those with whom we only too readily mix. Of course, let us be courteous and friendly and kind to all our neighbors, even if they are worldly people. It is our bounden duty. But at the least approach of evil, let us declare our position. and fix that point beyond which we will not stir, not be apologetic for the God whom we serve and the cause which we love. Unhappily, Jinder needed no importunity to turn aside to one whom he fancied was a harlot. He didn't know at the time that his own daughter-in-law whom he himself had already betrayed, publicly in a way which no gentleman should have done. When she came to him, disguised as a harlot, he was only too ready to turn aside, and the ease with which he was betrayed indicates only too well that his character was already known to Tamar. And she knew how to gain her end. And then there was his readiness to burn Tamar when her secret was discovered. And he didn't know that he was the father of her child. But she had obtained from him a certain token of his own personal property and then decamped with them. so that he never knew who the woman was when he sent the money to redeem the pledges which he had given her. But when they brought her out to burn her as a harlot at the stake, she sent the tokens to Judah and said, buy, you will know by these tokens who the man was who has brought me to this stake. And Judah, to his credit, when he saw them, he said, she has been more righteous than I. And he gave her the protection of her family. And her child, or rather her twins, but the one whom God selected of these twins, became the ancestor of our Savior Jesus Christ. But his readiness to judge Tamar before her secret was discovered is typical of those who condemn in others the sin of which they themselves are guilty. Notice David's indignation at Nathan's parable of his own crime. The man shall be put to death who has done such a thing as this, he said. easily to wax fearfully indignant at other people's sins, until Nathan wagged his prophetic finger at him and said, Thou art the man, O Kim. I was only telling you a story, and you were the principal actor in it. And David again, like Judah, acknowledged his sin and his crime. It's awfully easy to be a judge of another person's sins, isn't it? Awfully easy. Let us beware of it. Or let us be very, very restrained if some judgment is ever required of us. May our consciences be clear in all these things. We've enough of our own to answer for, however great may be the crimes of someone else. It is not wise to be too righteously indignant at other people's misdeeds, but rather we should look to ourselves lest we also be overcome by the evil of denouncing and judging other people. The evidences of Judah's guilt were all the time in Tamar's hand. Let us beware lest there should be some whom we have wronged in this world who will rise up in the judgment against us at the everlasting Asai. Then in this dreadful chapter, the 38th of Genesis, we read how God Sloan, the two sons, the two eldest sons of Judah before the Tamar episode. Ur and Onan, God slew them both as an example. Ur came to an untimely end. How often is this the case? Our newspapers daily record. Evil men seldom live out half their day. violence, disease, suicide, accident before them, and they are soon taken away. Others live on, of course, evil men to a ripe old age, but many do not. This is an example to those who will observe it, that there is a God who presides over And there is an eternal judgment to match the temporal punishments of sin. And so we read in such a psalm as the 37th psalm, fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green earth. Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Threaten not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath. Threaten not thyself in any wise to do evil, for evildoers shall be cut off. But those that wait upon the Lord They shall inherit the earth, and so on throughout this wonderful 37th Psalm, which teaches us to wait patiently on God and let Him do the work. Let Him put down the evil. He knows all about it. He knows more about it than we do. It is enough that God knows, and let us quietly wait upon Him until He brings to pass in His own time, in His own way, our deliverance. I have seen the wicked in great power, says the Psalmist, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not. Yet I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace. It is often necessary to wise providence that the wicked should be short-lived, lest evil should so multiply itself on the earth as before the flood, so as to corrupt human society in its entirety. This doesn't mean to say that all the wicked are short-lived and all the righteous are long-lived, very, very far from being the case. But the Word of God generalizes in this way and teaches us to observe the general providence of God that the wicked are short-lived and taken away suddenly. There was the case of Onan, the brother of Ur whom the Lord sloaned. Both these brothers seemed to have been addicted to the same impure practices. own and rebel against the laws of nature. There is no love between partners in wickedness. And although he was of the same type and had a good deal in common in his wickedness with his elder brother Ur, when it came to doing a brother's part according to the law of that time, he refused to do it. There is no real love between partners in wickedness. Let us remember that. The wicked do not love each other. Only the righteous do that. The memory of his brother's death inspired nothing in him either of fear or affection or regard. And he was the kind of man who would say in the light of his own early death, It can happen to all of us. This is what he said probably when his brother came to an untimely end. We'll die when our time comes anyway, so why worry? Am I my brother's keeper? Now the child of God should be very careful about using language like this, for these are the words of an atheist. In whom there is no repentance, only a complete surrender to the appetites of the body and the lusts of the imagination. With the Christian there is no such a thing as accidental death. Because what the world calls an accident, we know, is covered by the divine providence. It's true that calamities happen to all, young or old, godly or wicked. but they are adjusted by the providence of God in the working out of His purposes. We'll die when our time comes. This is true, but it's only a half-truth, concealing a very dangerous lie. The predestined time is not fixed regardless of conditions, and we may hasten our end. and die when our time comes by our own determination of what that time shall be in the providence of God. We can hasten our end by disobedience and wickedness, or we can prolong our days in a life consecrated to the Lord. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The man who abuses his body by alcoholic excess, or immoral practices, or by surrender to the false comforts of the tobacco weed, or by tearaway wickedness of any kind, may reasonably expect that he will die a premature death, and not too comfortable a death at that. Again it is a dangerous fallacy that sudden death is a good way to die. How often people say when someone has dropped down dead, at any rate he didn't know anything about it. It's a good way to go, isn't it? Yes, a good way to die. If you're an ox, after being stunned by a humane killer. To die like a dog with a shot from a bullet or a shot from the vet's needle. This may be alright if we're oxen and dogs. But with us it is different, after death the judgment. The agony of the thief on the cross might have been a dreadful way to die, but through all eternity he will thank God for that day that never seemed to end, that day of suffering which brought him to Christ and to paradise and salvation. The true believer is not afraid of death anyway, or he ought not to be. He ought to regard his deathbed as Elijah's heavenly chariot come to carry him away to realms of glory. But the unbeliever has better begin to pray, and to pray with repentance that he might not be suddenly cut off, that thrombosis or a road accident or a fall for some quick-killing disease might not terminate his days without warning, lest he open his eyes in hell and dwell forever in everlasting burnings in that moral fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Odin's sin has given his name to the practice of self-pollution. We now know by the disgusting surveys made by modern psychologists and doctors who've got nothing, anything better to do in their researches. We now know that here we have a sin to which the whole world is prone, and not just men alone either. We ought to speak such poor with shame of those things which are done in secret. Yet it often has a purgative effect upon the mind and conscience to refer pointedly to these errors. Says Dr. Adam Clarke, and for this quotation we must close because our time is growing. The sin of self-pollution is one of the most destructive evils ever practiced by fallen man. It excites the powers of nature to undo action. and produces violent secretions which necessarily and speedily exhaust the vital principle and energy. Hence the muscles become flaxed and feeble, the tone and natural action of the nerves relaxed and impeded, the understanding confused, the memory oblivious, the judgment perverted, the will indeterminate and wholly without energy to resist. worse woes than anyone can relate, says Dr. Clark, I have witnessed in this engrossing, unnatural, and most destructive of crimes. If thou hast entered the snare, flee from the destruction of both body and soul which awaits thee. God alone can save thee. Advice, warnings, increasing debility of body, mental decay, checks of conscience, expostulations of judgment and medical assistance will all be lost on me. God and God alone can save you from an evil which has in its issue the destruction of the body and the final perdition of the soul. The Bible is full of warnings. full of encouragement to seek the wisdom which cometh from above, full of rebukes for when we have been careless, when we have been forgetful, to recall us to ourselves, to bring us again to the standard of our heavenly and holy calling. We need to be reminded of these things. We need to be acquainted that the dangers would beset our path. Mighty men have fallen in this way. We have the Word of God and the Spirit of God, which only by diligent application, the discipline of the soul in divine things, the consecration of all our energies and time to Him with whom we have to do, the guarding of leisure moments and of wandering thoughts. These things are better, a serpent is better killed in the egg than in its maturity. It's easier at the beginning than at the end. So it is that these chapters are written, not to be read by those with a salacious appetite, but those who humbly recognize the principles of their own fallen nature, and the need to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation. So let it be.