Well, now that we've read the New Testament, I want you to turn in your Bibles back to the Old Testament and to the book of Genesis chapter 38. Genesis 38. As with Ecclesiastes, it's been a little bit of time since we have been in the book of Genesis. You remember last time we began the final section of the book that focuses on Joseph. This will take us to the end of the book. Last time we saw that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. And tonight we're going to look at the entirety of chapter 38, which is the accounts of Judah and Tamar. And if you've read chapter 38, or if you're familiar with the accounts of Judah and Tamar, you'll know that this is a difficult passage. And I'll warn you up front, it contains some graphic material and some potentially offensive material, but it is still nonetheless God's holy, perfect Word that we need. And so as we come to it, going through the book of Genesis, we're not going to skip over it, but we're going to study it and learn from it. As I said this morning, the sermon outline, if you want to use it, has been distributed via email and it was also posted on Facebook earlier today. So do get that if you don't have it already, if you would like to use it. Well, let's read now all 30 verses here of Genesis 38. This is God's Word. It came to pass at that time that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he married her and went into her. So 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. And she conceived yet again, and bore a son, and called his name Shelah. He was at Kezib when she bore him. Then Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord killed him. And Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up an heir to your brother. But Onan knew that the heir would not be his, and it came to pass when he went in to his brother's wife that he emitted on the ground, lest he should give an heir to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, therefore he killed him also. Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till my son Sheila is grown. For he said, lest he also die like his brothers. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. Now in the process of time, the daughter of Shua, Judah's wife, died. And Judah was comforted and went up to his sheep shearers at Timnah, he and his friend Hira, the Adulamite. And it was told Tamar, saying, look, your father-in-law is going up to Timna to shear his sheep. So she took off her widow's garments, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place which was on the way to Timna. For she saw that Sheila was grown, and she was not given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a harlot because she had covered her face. Then he turned to her by the way and said, please let me come into you, for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. So she said, what will you give me that you may come into me? And he said, I will send a young goat from the flock. So she said, will you give me a pledge till you send it? Then he said, what pledge shall I give you? So she said, your signet and cord and your staff that is in your hand. Then he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him. So she arose and went away and laid aside her veil and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the young goat by the hand of his friend, the Adulamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand, but he did not find her. Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot who was openly by the roadside? And they said, There was no harlot in this place. So he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her. Also the men of the place said, There was no harlot in this place. Then Judah said, Let her take them for herself, lest we be shamed. For I sent this young goat, and you have not found her. And it came to pass, about three months after, that Judah was told, saying, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the harlot. Furthermore, she is with child by harlotry. So Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. When she was brought out, she sent to her father-in-law, saying, by the man to whom these belong, I am with child. And she said, please determine whose these are, the signet and cord and staff So Judah acknowledged them and said, she has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Sheila my son, and he never knew her again. Now it came to pass at the time for giving birth, that behold, twins were in her womb. And so it was, when she was giving birth, that the one put out his hand, and the midwife took a scarlet thread and bound it on his hand, saying, this one came out first. Then it happened, as he drew back his hand, that his brother came out unexpectedly, and she said, how did you break through? This breach be upon you. Therefore, his name was called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out, who had the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah. And that brings us to the end of chapter 38. May the Lord bless His word to us tonight. Well, whenever you read the Bible, a good practice to develop is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you're reading about. I was meeting with some of the college students recently and we were talking about this. It's a basic principle of biblical interpretation because when you put yourself in the shoes of the character, you're more likely to understand what he or she was feeling and better understand the situation that the person was in, which in turn then helps you better understand the passage as a whole. And I trust to one degree or another, as you've read God's Word, you've done something like this. But if there's one passage in the Bible where we're not likely to do that, Genesis 38 may be it. I may not be the only one. I'm sure there are some others. But here's a passage where we don't want to put ourselves in the shoes of the person we read about. Because when you read of all the sinful things that Judah did here, We don't want to identify with him, do we? Now I know I don't, and I'm sure you don't either. And yet I would submit to you this evening that that is exactly what we need to do. We need to identify with Judah. Now I don't say that because we've committed all the same sins as Judah. That's not the point here, though we may have committed some of the same sins as Judah. But we need to put ourselves in his shoes and identify with him because we are just as sinful as Judah. And so as we look at these verses tonight, we're going to primarily focus on that aspect of all of this, the sinful ways that we are just like Judah. And as you can tell from the outline, if you've looked at it, these are not good ways. These are not encouragements for us. But I want you to hang in there as we make our way through the passage, because there is also great encouragement for us to take from this passage as well. And that is, though you are sinful like Judah, God can transform you by His grace in Jesus Christ. That's the main point of this chapter. It may be difficult, it may be graphic at times, but that is the point of it all. Though we are sinful, like this man Judah, God can transform us by His grace in Jesus Christ. So that's the main point I want you to see. Now, let's dive into the passage here. The first point to consider is that, like Judah, we fail to honor God in our relationships. In the passage here, Moses takes a brief break from the story of Joseph to focus on one of Joseph's brothers, Judah. And Judah, you may remember, he was the one last time who came up with the plan to sell Joseph into slavery. And here in chapter 38, we're told what happened in Judah's life while Joseph was a slave down in Egypt. And in particular, we see here at the beginning of the chapter, that Judah failed to honor God in his relationships. So go back and look at verse 1. It came to pass at that time that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira. So after making a profit from the sale of his brother, which we saw last time, Judah went on to leave his family for a time. He departed from his brothers and he went to visit a certain Adullamite named Hiram. And Adullam was a place west of Hebron in the land of Canaan. So by visiting this man, Judah was visiting a Canaanite. That's what we need to understand here. And yet he wasn't just visiting a Canaanite, he was turning aside to visit a Canaanite. The New King James Version actually doesn't translate it this way, but if you have the ESV, this is brought out for you. That's what the Hebrew word means here. In other words, this was not a good visit for Judah to make. Judah was turning aside. He was veering off the path. He was deviating from where he should be. And of course, this is because, as we've seen in the past, Jacob's family was to remain cautiously separate from the people of Canaan at the time. They were not to have close friendships or relationships with them, and yet we're told Judah did not seem to care about that. He willingly and knowingly left the covenant community to go be with the people of the world. That's not all that Judah did wrong. Look at the next verse, verse 2. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he married her and went into her. We've seen that this is another thing that was forbidden in Jacob's family. They were not to marry the Canaanites either. Genesis 28, verse 1, and yet here we see Judah did not seem to care about that either. What's more, and we miss this, but Moses is bringing this out for us, Judah was a bum of a father. If you look at verse 3, when his first son was born, Judah was there to name him. He called his name Er. And that's good, that was the father's responsibility in those days. But when the second son was born, look at the text, Judah's wife had to name the child because he failed to do so. Verse 4, she called his name Onan. And by the time the third son was born, Judah was nowhere to be found. He was off at this place called Kazeb, doing his own thing while his wife was at home giving birth. And so not only did Judah have the wrong friends and marry the wrong woman, he was an uninvolved, negligent father. That is, though he was part of God's covenant community, Judah failed to honor God in his relationships. And brothers and sisters, do we not also fail to honor God in our relationships as well today? Right now, we're all spending a lot more time at home, aren't we? And so we have husbands who are at home when they're normally at work. And we have kids who are at home where some of them may normally be at school. And so right now, we're all living in close quarters. And if you are with your family or even just with your spouse, we're living in greater proximity to one another than we typically do. We're stuck in the same house with these people and we have no other place to go. And as I'm sure you've experienced, when that happens, tensions start to rise, don't they? There's conflict, there's irritability, there's frustration. My guess is you've struggled with that in one way or another over the last couple of weeks. Why? Because we're just like Judah. We may not do the exact same things, but we also fail to honor God in the relationships that we have in life. So that's the first thing we need to see here. Now, secondly, we also need to understand that we are like Judah in that we are also self-seeking by nature. And so look with me now at verse six. Then Judah took a wife, for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. So just as Judah married a Canaanite woman, he also took a Canaanite woman to be a wife for his son. The woman's name was Tamar, as we're told. And again, this shows us Judah was not caring very much at the time for the Lord and for the Lord's will. But as we look at the passage here, the marriage between his son Ur and Tamar did not last very long, because as we're told in verse 7, Ur was a wicked man. And so the Lord brought Ur's life to an end. And so now then that Ur had died and Tamar was still childless, it was time for Judah's second son, Onan, to provide a son for her. And that's what we see here in verse 8. And Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and marry her and raise up an heir to your brother. This is what was called Leveret marriage. Moses actually talks about it later in Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses 5 to 6. If you're interested, you could look at that later. But in other words, at the time, If a man died without an heir, then it was his brother's responsibility to marry his widow so that he could have an heir and so that his name would live on. So in this case, when Ur died, Tamar could not marry anyone else outside the family. She had to marry Onan, the brother, and Onan had to marry her. Because now it was their responsibility to provide an heir for Tamar's dead husband. But, as we're told in verse 9, Onan wouldn't cooperate because he knew that the child would not be his, and he wanted the rights of the firstborn for himself. And so, as we're told in verse 10, since he did not cooperate, the Lord killed him for his wickedness as well. So now we're down to the third son. Ur is dead. Onan is dead. Now it's left to Judah's third son, Shelah, to provide the heir. And yet now it's not Shelah who fails to cooperate with the plan. Now it's Judah who fails to cooperate. So look at verse 11. Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in your father's house till my son Shelah is grown. For he said, lest he also die like his brothers. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. So knowing that the first two sons had died as a result of marrying Tamar, Judah was afraid the third son was going to die as well. In other words, in his mind, Tamar was cursed. She was the cursed woman and so you needed to avoid her. Which is interesting because apparently he didn't realize the reason the sons died was because of their own wickedness, not because of their marriage to Tamar. But nonetheless, he said, Tamar was to go back to her father's house and wait for Shayla to grow up. But as the text brings out to us, all of this was just an excuse. Because as it's revealed later, Judah never intended to give Shayla to her. And so the issue was not that he was too young. The issue was that he did not want Shayla to die. So instead of giving him to Tamar as he should have, Judah kept Sheolah for himself. And what we have to understand about this is that this was a sin against God. and against Tamar, because according to the law of God, as well as the law of the land at the time, Tamar had the legal God-given right to marry Shaelah and to conceive a son with him. What's more, since God had promised to make the people of Jacob into a great nation, they were to be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 35, verse 11. And if Judah didn't give Shaleh to Tamar, then Judah would be without an heir, and his line would end. Because as long as Tamar was alive, Shaleh could not marry anyone else but her. So you see, by withholding Shaleh from Tamar, Judah is sinning against God, Judah is sinning against Tamar, and in all of it, Judah was disregarding the Lord and His covenant purposes. But again, Judah didn't care about these things because Judah was self-seeking by nature, just as we are self-seeking by nature today. I think we've seen this brought out for us in many ways throughout this recent pandemic. I understand that we're in need of certain items right now more than others, things like hand sanitizer and toilet paper and other such things. But I'm not convinced that the reason our stores are sold out of hand sanitizer is because more people are buying hand sanitizer. No, I'm convinced the reason we're out of hand sanitizer is because some people bought way more hand sanitizer than they needed. Instead of thinking of how there are other people who also need some of it, they're thinking only of themselves. And that's been the whole issue with stockpiling lately. It's largely been driven by utter selfishness, because that's what comes out of us when we're living in a crisis. Our attention is right here. It's on what's best for me, first and foremost, not on other people. And even if you haven't stockpiled hand sanitizer, you and I, we are just as selfish by nature as anybody else. This is why, for instance, we keep hitting the snooze button when we know we should get up to have some time with God and His Word every morning. This is why we get frustrated when life does not go our way. It's because we're just like Judah. We want what we want by nature, and whenever we give in to our selfishness, we commit the same sins that Judah did. We're sinning against God. We're sinning against other people. And we're disregarding and making light of what God wants to accomplish in this world. So again, we're no different than this man. We're also selfish. And it gets worse. Then we see thirdly here on the outline that like Judah, we also tend to look for pleasure in the wrong places. So now look with me at verse 12. Moses says, now in the process of time, the daughter of Shua, Judah's wife, died. And Judah was comforted and went up to his sheep shearers at Timnah, he and his friend Hira, the Adulamite. Sheep shearing was a once a year activity. And as such, it was a celebrated time. So by saying that Judah went up to his sheep shearers, he was not necessarily going up to check on them. He was going up there to celebrate. He was, in a word, going to party with the Canaanites. And according to Moses, when Tamar heard what Judah was planning to do, she saw her opportunity to finally get a son for her dead husband. Verse 13, And it was told Tamar, saying, Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. So she took off her widow's garments, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place which was on the way to Timnah. For she saw that Sheila was grown, and she was not given to him as a wife. Tamar was no fool. She realized Judah was never giving Sheila to her. And so she took matters into her own hands, and she said, if Judah is not going to give me his son so that I can have a child, then Judah himself will give me a child. And that's what she pursued. She dressed up like a harlot, she went to a visible location, and she waited for Judah to walk by. And as we think of this, we have to remember Tamar had the legal God-given right to have a son. That was undeniable. We talked about that earlier with this provision of leverate marriage. This is what God wanted and even what the nation wanted at the time. So it's not that she was desperate. That's not the issue here. It's that she was fighting for her rights. And that was, in a way, a good thing. But at the same time, while she had the right to conceive a child, this was certainly not the way to go about it. It may have been the only feasible way to do it, but it was the wrong way. Because if the plan worked, then Tamar would be both committing incest and fornication. Not to mention that she would also be guilty of deceit. But since it was sheep-shearing season, Tamar knew there would be harlots in attendance. That's often how the pagans tried to ensure the prosperity of their flocks and their fields, and since Judah's wife had just died, Tamar knew that he would be seeking female attention. And that again tells you the kind of character that Judah was known for having at that time. And so it was a wrong plan, but at the same time we have to admit it was a smart plan, and it worked exactly as Tamar had hoped. When Judah saw the harlot by the side of the road, everything took place. So putting all of this together, after Judah's wife died, what did he do? He went to a pagan party, slept with a harlot, where he unknowingly committed incest and knowingly committed fornication. Now maybe he did all of that to comfort himself, I don't know. But one thing's for sure, Judah looked for pleasure in the wrong places. And again, if we're honest, we could be just like Judah in this regard. We may not do the same things he did, but when we're feeling down, even when we're not feeling down for that matter, we tend to go to the wrong things to make us happy. Instead of looking to God and to his gracious gifts, we have a few extra drinks. We go somewhere we shouldn't. We start looking at illicit websites. We gorge ourselves on pizza and ice cream. We fritter away our time on Facebook and Netflix. Two years ago, my family and I, we were driving to Brazil, Indiana for a 4th of July picnic with some of Anne's family. And yet when we got there, or when we thought we had gotten there, we couldn't find the house. Our GPS said we were there. We had been there before, and yet the house was not there. And so we weren't sure what was going on. And as it turned out, the GPS had on its own, I don't know why it did this, but on its own, changed the address. And so it had taken us to an entirely different place, and we didn't realize it. And you see, as long as we stayed there, we could have looked all day long for that house, and yet we weren't going to find it. Why? Because we were entirely in the wrong location. And in a similar way, when we do these things, like gorge on pizza, or look at illicit websites, or whatever, we think we're going to find happiness from these things. And yet, while we may find a cheap substitute for happiness, we'll never find the real thing. Why? Because we're looking in the wrong place. And yet we're just like Judah, and so we keep looking in those wrong places over and over again, believing that same old lie, thinking it will make us happy. That's what's wrong with us. Like Judah, we look for pleasure in the wrong places. And as we've seen with the previous points, that is never to be the case with us. Well then, let's move on to the fourth point here. And that is, like Judah, we can also be hypocritical. This is the final negative way in which we are like Judah, as presented to us here in Genesis 38. So look with me now at verse 19. So she arose and went away and laid aside her veil and put on the garments of her widowhood. So Tamar returned to her normal attire. She's no longer dressed like a harlot. And the next thing we're told is that Judah tried to send the payment to her. And I didn't say much about this in the last point. And I'll say a little bit more about this in the next point. But the payment they agreed upon was that of a goat. But since Judah didn't have a goat with him at the time, he gave her a pledge. That is, he gave her some of his own personal items as a form of earnest money. And so now that he has the goat, he wants her to have the goat, and he wants to have his personal items back in return. But as Moses tells us in verses 20 to 22, Judah's friend could not find the harlots, and so Judah decided to cut his losses and just let her keep the items and move on with his life. But then something happened. Look at verse 24. And it came to pass, about three months after, that Judah was told, saying, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the harlot. Furthermore, she is with child by harlotry. So now the secret's out. And we don't know how did it become known. Maybe it was because Tamar was showing at this point, and so people could see that she was pregnant. Maybe Tamar was just making the announcement herself. We don't know. But now the word was spreading that unmarried Tamar, she had committed harlotry. And worse yet, she had become pregnant as a result of her harlotry. And when Judah found out about this, how did he respond? It's at the end of verse 24. So Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. Now, in the Old Testament civil law, adultery was punishable by death, but not usually by burning. It was the especially heinous sexual sins that carried such a penalty of burning. But again, we see here, Judah doesn't seem to care about those things. Instead, Judah, he wants the strictest punishment for Tamar. If Tamar had done these things, Tamar was to be burned for it. And yet if you haven't caught on to it already, this entire scene is full of a lot of irony, isn't it? Because what had Judah done up to this point? He had sold his brother into slavery. He had left the covenant community to be with pagans. He had wrongfully married a Canaanite. He had neglected his children. He wouldn't give Sheila to Tamar as God said he should. and he slept with a harlot who also happened to be his daughter-in-law. So if anyone was to understand Tamar's situation and have compassion on her, you'd think it'd be Judah. Because Judah was just as much of a sinner as she was, if not more so. And yet, despite all of his own sins, Judah demanded that Tamar be burned. Why? Because Judah was a hypocrite. One time when the boys were younger, my family and I went to see a production of Frog and Toad. You may remember the children's books, Frog and Toad. We loved reading them when our kids were younger. And as they watched this show, my kids loved it because unlike in the book, now they could look up on the stage and they could actually see Frog and Toad right there. And that was very enjoyable to them. But at the same time, even as young kids, they knew that's not really frog and toad. Those are just people dressed up and pretending to be frog and toad. And in the Bible, that's what it means to be a hypocrite. It means you pretend to be someone that you're not. Now Judah was certainly upset about Tamar's actions. After all, her actions had brought shame on his family. But that is not the only reason why he wanted Tamar to be burned. He also wanted her to be burned because if she died, then Shayla would finally be free to marry someone else, and his family line could continue apart from her, whom he believed to be cursed. You see, by denouncing her actions, Judah seemed to care so much about righteousness and keeping the law, but in all actuality, he didn't care nearly as much as he seemed to. Judah was just pretending. And friends, we can be just as hypocritical as Judah today. Even though we're members of Christ's church, and even though others think we are Christ's disciples, sometimes we don't care very much about Christ, do we? On Sunday, we can seem to be so zealous, so excited for the Lord, and yet, as we go into the week, we often forget about God, we don't pick up His word, And we live to satisfy our own fleshly desires. And we get upset when our kids sin against us, or when someone else sins against us, and yet we often respond to their sin by sinning against them. We condemn those in the world for their ungodliness, and yet we do so at the same time while remaining completely content with all of our own ungodliness. So just as we've seen in the previous points, Judah's not alone in any of these things. We are, truth be told, just like Judah. We are also hypocritical. And so we are, like him, a very sinful people, are we not? Our lives are not what they should be. We profess to be the children of God, and yet we do not live in a way that is becoming of such children all the time. But here's the good news, and this brings us to our fifth point on the outline, and that is, like Judah, we can be transformed by the grace of God. There is hope for us. Look with me now at verse 25. When she was brought out, she said to her father-in-law, saying, By the man to whom these belong, I am with child. And she said, Please determine whose these are, the signet and cord and staff. So in response to Judah saying that she should be burned, Tamar wants it to be known who impregnated her. And the evidence she provided was a signet, a cord, and a staff. These were the things that Judah had given to her as a pledge previously. Now, the signet was a cylindrical seal that in some way would have been able to identify Judah as the owner. It had some kind of impression on it that he could press into wax. It was kind of his signature at the time. And that signet would often hang around a person's neck by a cord, so that's the cord. And the staff was a symbol of a person's authority, which was also something that could usually be traced back to its owner. So by having these three things, in other words, Tamar had undeniable proof that Judah had done it. And all three of these things could have easily been traced back to him. One author says, in modern terms, these things would be like a person's driver's license, credit card, and social security number. If someone has those things, it's pretty hard to deny that those are yours. And so it was clear, very clear now, that Judah was the man who had committed harlotry with her. And when this became known, notice how Judah responded this time. Because it's different than how he responded previously. Verse 26. So Judah acknowledged them and said, she has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Sheila, my son, and he never knew her again. Judah confessed his sin. He confessed his sin. And whether it was at this exact moment or sometime later, it seems that a genuine repentance took place in the life of Judah as a result. We know this first of all because here in verse 26, Moses says that Judah never knew her again, even though they had conceived a child together. And you would think in that situation, the best thing for them to do would be to marry. They didn't do that. Why? Because he was her father-in-law. And it was wrong for them to be married. So this was a righteous thing for them never to know each other again. But we also know that genuine repentance took place in the life of Judah because of what we're told about him later in the rest of Genesis. If you recall from the story of Joseph, we'll see this in the future, after his brothers had come down to Egypt looking for food, Joseph sent them back up to Canaan to get their youngest brother Benjamin and bring him down to Egypt. And when it was time for them to return to Egypt with Benjamin, Jacob, their father, protested. But listen to what Judah said in response. Genesis 43, verses 8 and 9. Then Judah said to Israel his father, send the lad with me, and we will arise and go that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I myself will be surety for him, from my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. Do you see that? And this mindset continued with Judah. When the brothers, including Benjamin, were back in Egypt and about to start heading back to Canaan with more food, you'll remember that Joseph's cup was found in Benjamin's sack of grain. Not because he had stolen it, though it looked that way, but because Joseph had planted it. And when Joseph then said that Benjamin had to become a slave in Egypt since he had stolen the cup, what did Judah do? Judah pleaded on Benjamin's behalf. We see that in Genesis 44, verses 18 and following. And then when he had finished pleading for his brother, Judah did the most amazing thing of all. Judah offered to be a slave in Egypt, in the place of Benjamin. Genesis 44, verse 33. Now therefore, please let your servants remain instead of the lad as a slave to my Lord. And let the lad, that's Benjamin, go up with his brothers. You see the picture we're given here? In Genesis 37 and 38, the picture we're given is that Judah was full of unrighteousness. And yet, in Genesis 43 and 44, we're given a picture of Judah's life being full of righteousness. So at first, Judah is the kind of man who would sell his brother into slavery, but later he's the kind of man who offers himself as a slave in the place of his brother. You see, there's a total reversal to be seen here between the Judah of the past and the Judah of the future. Why? Because God had transformed Judah by his grace. Jeremiah 13, 23 says, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. In other words, Judah did not make this change in his life. God made this change in his life, otherwise it could never have happened. And friends, the encouragement we're to take from this is that God can do the same and bring about the same change in our lives as well. Though we don't honor him in our relationships, though we're self-seeking, though we look for pleasure in the wrong places, though we are often hypocritical, the point is God can change us too. He can bring about a total reversal in us as well, transforming us from people of unrighteousness to people of righteousness. Some of you may have heard of the Transformers toys. In my house, we have a lot of these toys. They're quite popular right now. And one of the reasons kids love these toys is because you can have a toy that looks like one thing, and yet if you take the right motions, it becomes something entirely different. So you can have something that is a red and white and blue semi-truck, one minute, and yet when you turn it, it's a robot. It's no longer a semi-truck. And that's what God can do in our lives. He has the motions, and so He can take us from one thing and transform us into something different. And yet it's not just something different, it's something better, it's something holy. And that's because, as we see sixthly and finally on the outline, God used Judah's sin to bring us a Savior. To bring us a Savior. Look with me at verses 27 and following. Now it came to pass at the time for giving birth that, behold, twins were in her womb. And so it was when she was giving birth that the one put out his hand, and the midwife took a scarlet thread and bound it on his hand, saying, this one came out first. Then it happened as he drew back his hand that his brother came out unexpectedly, and she said, how did you break through? This breach be upon you. Therefore, his name was called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out who had the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah. So here we are at the end of Tamar's pregnancy. She had twins, two sons, and as we've seen in the past, the younger of the two sons became the firstborn, and that younger of the two was named Perez. And we might be tempted to skip right over this. In fact, if we were just reading through Genesis, we probably would skip right over that. These are just two boys. And yet, we cannot miss the fact that Perez is a very important biblical figure. Later, in the book of Ruth, when she and Boaz gave birth to a son named Obed, we're given a genealogy to show the connection between Ruth and King David. And notice how the genealogy begins. Ruth chapter 4, verses 18-22. Now this is the genealogy of Perez. Perez begot Hezron. Hezron begot Ram. And Ram begot Amminadab. Amminadab begot Nashon. And Nashon begot Salmon. Salmon begot Boaz. And Boaz begot Obed. Obed begot Jesse. And Jesse begot David. In other words, Perez, this son, born to Judah and Tamar, was one of David's ancestors. David came from this boy's family. And more importantly than that, the greater David, Jesus Christ himself, also came from Perez's family. I'm not going to read it now, but I've included in your outline Matthew 1, verses 1 and following, the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And you will see how Perez is included there as well. So not only was David from the family of Perez, so was Jesus Christ. Jesus was from the family of Perez. And do you realize what that means? Think about that. That means it was through this illicit relationship between Judah and Tamar, a very wicked deed, that God brought about the birth of our Savior. That's what we see here. We'll see later in Genesis 49, the Messiah was to come from Judah. And you realize here in Genesis 38, we're told how that happened. God used the sin of Judah and Tamar to bring about his plan. It's amazing if you think of it. It tells us Judah may not have cared that much for the covenant. You and I may not care as we should for the covenant, but God always and perfectly cares for the covenant. That's what we see here. And that's why we can be transformed by the grace of God today. It's because Jesus Christ was born so that He could take sinful people and make them into holy people. Matthew 121, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. That's why Jesus came into the world, to save his people from the penalty of sin and from the power and pollution of sin. That is, he came to transform pathetic sinners like you and me, and make us into God-honoring, righteous, obedient people. And so then, if we want to be transformed, just as we see here with Judah, then what do we need to do? We need to repent and look to Christ. We need to acknowledge our sins as he did, and seek the Lord's grace. Because no matter where you are spiritually, whether you're an unbeliever tonight, or you've been a believer for 50 years, that is always the path to spiritual transformation. Repent, acknowledge your sins, turn away from them, and turn to God through faith in Jesus Christ, His Son. That is how Judah was transformed. And that is how we will be transformed today as well. So yes, we are very sinful. We are very sinful, just like Judah. But we need to know, in light of our sins, that God can transform us by His grace. So as you seek that change, look to Christ for it. Ask that God would give you more of his spirit. Rely upon the Lord for change and abide in him through the word and through prayer. And may the Lord use those means to continue his good work in our lives. Let's pray together. Lord, tonight we do ask that you would give us a greater desire for transformation. The change that we see here in Judah's life is astounding. And may that same change be seen in all of us this evening. We pray that you would give us a greater desire for righteousness, a greater desire for holiness. Lord, help us not to be selfish, help us not to be hypocritical, help us not to look for pleasure in the wrong places and to dishonor you in our relationships, but rather to live as Christ lived in this world. And so we pray that through the working of your spirit and by your powerful grace, you would change us and make us more like your son. Please deliver us from evil and grow us in obedience, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.