All right, Genesis 38. I'll let you guys vote. Should I read the whole chapter or should I do it in chunks as we go through each section? Who says read the whole chapter? Okay, I guess it's chunks. I'm assuming since no one voted to read the whole chapter, at least one person would vote to read it in chunks, which means the nays carry it. Okay. Well, we're going to look at Genesis 38 now. you know, a bit of full disclosure. I haven't, until now, I haven't really spent a lot of time studying Genesis in depth. I've read it multiple times, but I never really studied it to teach it. And it always baffled me. why the Joseph narrative seems to be kind of broken by this story of Judah that seems to have no relation to what's happening. The last time we see, you know, when we look at the end of chapter 37, Joseph is sold into slavery, right? He's sold by his brothers into the hands of the Midianite traders and then As Jacob is mourning the loss of his son, we see Joseph is brought down to Egypt. And then all of a sudden, and now Judah, it's like, okay. And then this, it's like, this is kind of a gross affair. As you look at it, it's like, what's going on here? And then the next chapter in chapter 39, Joseph's in the house of Potiphar. So it's like, why does anybody else have that feeling? It's like, why does this narrative, break like this. Do you ever feel that way or you just don't want to raise your hand and admit that you felt this way? Did you always felt, oh no, this makes perfect sense that we would see this. You're shaking your head like it. Oh, you didn't think about it. All right. Anybody here think I'm weird because I think about these things? All right. What we see Genesis, Genesis has done this in the past where, um, It kind of telegraphs something. I made mention of this, I think it was back in Genesis 22. Yeah. If you look at the end of Genesis 22, in Genesis 22, That's where Abraham is called by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And God provides for the ram and everything is wonderful. It's a great picture of the sacrifice that Christ makes for us on our behalf. And then you get this little thing at the end of Genesis 22, it came to pass that these things that it was told Abraham saying, indeed, Milcah is now born children to your brother Nahor. And then you've got a whole bunch of names. And then you have on here in verse 23, and Bethuel begot Rebekah. And you're like, You know, now we know because we've read Genesis a million billion times, we know who Rebecca is, but up until this point, we've never seen Rebecca before. It's like, why are you telling this information? Well, because in a couple of chapters, we're going to meet Rebecca. The reason I say that is it's sort of like the Genesis narrative has this thing of introducing you to things before they actually become pertinent or they become relevant to the story. So I'm going to make the argument here that Genesis 38 is doing this with Judah, because what we're going to see in this chapter is that what happens to Judah here is going to shape his life and it's going to change his character. to what we see later. Because I want to look at, if you look at chapter 43, so skip ahead, this is not my way of trying to cheat into later chapters early in, but in chapter 43, At this point in the narrative, Joseph is already in Egypt. He's already been elevated to the second in command, and he's already instituted the one big, beautiful famine bill to help with the famine in Egypt. And his brothers come down, and they ask for grain, and Joseph recognizes them, and they don't recognize him. And he says, bring your brother. I won't give you food until you bring your brother. So they go back, and their bags are filled, and their money, you know. And then they come back, and they go to Jacob, like, we've got to bring Benjamin back. And Jacob's like, no way, Jose. I've already lost my favorite son. I'm not going to lose my second favorite son. So, you know, and it says that the family was severe in the land and it came to pass when they had eaten up all the grain, which they brought back from Egypt, their father said to them, go back to the land, go back and buy us a little food. And in verse three, Judah speaks up. Now already by this time, we know Judah has kind of taken a bit of a leadership role in the family. You know, Simeon is kind of out of favor, or sorry, Reuben's out of favor. Levi and Simeon are. They're a little too volatile. Let's just put it that way. They're not quite the guys that you want to, you want to leave in leadership because you might wind up with an entire village slaughtered, you know, just because. So Judah kind of takes the leadership role. He says, look, the man said, we won't see your face unless your brother's with us. And he says in verse four, if you send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you will not send them, we will not go down. For the man said to us, you shall not see my face until your brother is with you. And then verse six, Israel said, why did you deal so wrongfully with me as to tell the man whether you had still another brother? So he goes on, but this is what I want to get to. Verse eight, 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, let me bear the blame forever." So how does Judah get to that point? Because the last time we saw Judah, what's he doing? He's selling his brother, right? So from last time, when we looked at the end of chapter 37, Joseph was sent to find his brothers. When the brothers see him, they make a plan to kill him and say, you know, basically they're trying to change their fate because Joseph had dreamed that they would bow to him. It's like, well, let's kill him and see if his dreams come true. And then Judah's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let not his blood be on our hands. Let's just sell him into slavery and then we'll beat him up, throw him in his pit and sell him to some slavers. And that's what they do. So that's the last time we see anything of Judah. So how does Judah go from plotting to sell his younger brother into slavery to, hey, let my life be a surety for Benjamin. If he does not come back, you could take it out on me. Well, I think chapter 38 is going to give us a little clue as to how God changes the heart of Judah here. So we get the little sorted story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. And really the point for the study tonight is that the Lord molds our character in the forge of sin and adversity. That's what's going to happen here in this study. What do I have there, five parts? Five whole points. I know, I know. Not every message is a three-point message. Sometimes you get five. So you get five. They're all centered around Judah. So you've got Judah's choice, Judah's sons, Judah's sin, Judah's repentance, and at the end, Judah's legacy. All right. So first we're going to look at Judah's choice. That's the first five verses. So I'm allowed to read now, right? I can read the first five. Okay. So Genesis 38, starting in verse one, 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 she called his name Shelah. He was at Chezeb when she bore him. So you've got There you have the first five verses, Judah's choice. Now, what do I mean by Judah's choice? Well, Judah left, right? So the last time, and it seems like this happens almost right on the heels of what happened at the end of 37. It came to pass at that time. So right after They brought news to Jacob, their father, over the plot to make it look like Joseph was killed, and Jacob was inconsolable. If you remember, he was mourning, and he could not be consoled, and his children tried to console him, and he wouldn't have any of it. Now, you have to understand, part of that's the family dynamic that's going on here. Jacob, of course, had two wives. The first wife was not the one he wanted. My guess is that the children she bore were not exactly the children he wanted. That's evidenced when Joseph is born. He's given the coat of many colors. He's given the place of prominence. He, in Jacob's eyes, is the son of his old age and the son of the covenant. He doesn't want these other children. He's not really taking any consolation from the unloved children of the unloved wife. So Jacob or Judah now is probably like, OK, enough with this dysfunctional family. OK. You know, he's basically in line to be the first born, if you will, because of the other three sons. He's like look obviously dad doesn't like us and Why should I stick around here? I'm gonna see What's happening somewhere else in a sense? It's almost like the prodigal right? It's like I'm tired of living here I'm just I'm gonna leave so that's what he does So he he leaves he changed he he he He just decides, I want to leave from this family. I want to get away from this crazy family. He leaves their presence and he goes, now they're already in the land of Canaan, but he goes and starts dwelling with Canaanites. I presume that's just another flavor of Canaanites. So he finds a friend named Hira and then Verse two, we see here that there was a daughter of a certain, now notice she doesn't have a name. How much love do you think is going on here in this marriage that the Bible doesn't even bother to give her a name? One wonders if Judah ever knew her name. It's like one of those, you see those stories, you wake up the next morning like, and who are you again? That's kind of what's going on here. She doesn't even have a name. And the ESV kind of captures more of the sense, right? If you have an ESV, it says there he took her and went into her, right? That kind of gives you the idea of This was a pure, sensual, I want to gratify my physical desires thing, I'm going to take this woman, I'm going to go into her, she'll be my wife, and we'll pump out some babies, and so on and so forth. It's the same language here, took her, that is used in Genesis 3.6 when it's told how Eve saw that the fruit was desirable and she took it, or in Genesis 6.2 when we're told that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and saw that they were desirable and took them and went into them. It's just that kind of same kind of language going on there. So Judah has enough with Jacob and his family. He decides to make it on his own. He befriends this guy named Hira and he gets involved with this unnamed woman, daughter of a man named Shuah, and they have three children. The three sons, of course, are Ur. Now, interestingly enough, again, notice how little Judah's involved in this. Okay. He names the first kid. Who names the other two kids? Yeah, the unnamed woman names the other two kids. So it's not to suggest that Judah's not around, but Judah probably doesn't care. Or he doesn't care. He doesn't care enough to be like, you name them. I'll take the first one. You name the other two. So the first one is named Ur. You got Onan and you have Shelah. And the other two, as I said, the wife names. Now, We can't presume to know Judah's heart in this manner, but I think he saw the writing on the wall at the end of chapter 37. Jacob is never going to love, at least in Judah's mind, Jacob's never going to love the children of Leah. When Joseph was dead, it says, my gray hairs are going to go down to Sheol. That's his attitude. It's like, I'm effectively dead at this point. Judah's like, okay, that's enough. I'm going to leave home. So he just says, okay, I've had enough with this. I've had enough with this dysfunctional family and he's going to leave. Now, We've seen this happen in the past with the narrative in Genesis. When people leave The covenant community, they're, in a sense, leaving the sphere of blessing, right? Think of Lot with Abram in Genesis 13, when they split over the land. Lot, thinking with his eyes, sees the cities of the valley and sees that they're well waters. He says, I'll take that. And Abram's left in the promised land. But what happens to Lot? Well, Lot gets compromised because he lives, you know, he lives outside of Sodom, then he lives you know, at the edge of Sodom. And then the next time you see him, he's in Sodom. And then he has to be like snatched out of Sodom before the hellfire and brimstone comes down. When you leave the covenant community, you leave the sphere of blessing. And Judah is leaving the sphere of blessing. Now, to kind of bring this to a context that we might understand, You see this a lot when you see people who church hop. They get dissatisfied with what's going on in the church, like, ah, this church is dysfunctional, I'm going to go to the next church. And then, ah, this church is dysfunctional, I'm going to go to the next church. When you do that so many times you might think, Maybe the problem is you yeah, I don't know I I used to know somebody who changed jobs a lot right and and it was always somebody else's fault You know it's like well the boss didn't like me so I had to leave and find another job or the co-workers didn't it's like You know, you have all this dissatisfaction at all these jobs and the common denominator in all of these is you, right? And that's what we're going to see here. Where's the problem going to be? The problem's going to be with Judah. That's what we're going to see in a moment. But Judah's like, I've had it with this family. It's time to, you know, see if I can make it on my own. I'm going to go live with the canines. That's another thing you don't like either. It's like when you, God is going to make it known to his people that they should not engage in this manner with the Canaanites because it's compromise. You're living in the world and you're compromising with the world. And so you're marrying a Canaanite, you're dwelling amongst the Canaanites and it's going to bring compromise on Judah's life here. So now we move on to verses 6 through 11. We're going to look at Judah's son. So Judah's choice was to leave his family and go dwell with the Canaanites, take a Canaanite wife and bear half Canaanite children. Now we're going to look at these children in verse 6 through 11. 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 Judas said to Onan, go into your brother's wife, 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 Shelah is grown. For he said, lest he also tie like his brothers. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. Okay. So we're introduced here now to the other main character in this part of the narrative, which is Tamar. So we've seen Judah, his ill-begotten choice to leave his family and dwell amongst the Canaanites. And now we're introduced to Tamar, who presumably is a Canaanite as well. And Judah here is doing what Abraham did for Isaac and what Isaac did for Jacob, where you arrange a marriage. It's like, okay, when it was time for Isaac to take a wife and perpetuate the line of promise, Abraham sends him you know, sends his servant back to his homeland to find a wife and finds Rebecca. And, you know, Rachel or Rebecca does the same thing with Jacob, sends him back to the family home, you know, back in Ur and finds a wife for him there. Well, Judah finds a wife for his son, his eldest Ur, and this is Tamar. Now we're told here that Ur was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord killed him. Well, what did Ur do? I don't know. It doesn't say. But whatever it is, it must have been pretty bad, okay? It must have been pretty bad for the Lord to kill him. Now, how did the Lord kill him? I don't know. It doesn't say. But the only time so far in the Genesis narrative where we've seen the Lord take action like this was where? Sodom and Gomorrah, right, where the Lord rained fire down upon the city for their wickedness. So whatever it was that Ur did was bad enough for the Lord to take action, whether directly or indirectly. But he's so bad that we're not told what he did. The Lord just said, I got to take you out. So then Judah goes to number two and says to number two, okay, uh, number two son. Okay. Anybody remember the Charlie, Charlie Chan series girl? No. Number two son. No. Wow. That's an old series. Charlie, Charlie Chan, the detective, the Chinese detective. No. Okay. Stick to John Wayne movies, right? Is that? Okay. Charlie Chan, come on, detective. All right. I think it was, anyway, I'll just stop. I'll quit while I'm behind. He goes to number two son, Onan. He says, go into your brother's wife, Mary, and raise up an heir for your brother. Now what's going on here? This is a practice that we'll see codified later in the Old Testament. If you want to turn to Deuteronomy 25, it's a practice called Leverite marriage. And as I understand it, Leverite is Latin for brother-in-law. And the practice basically is what you see here. where if a son dies, if you have multiple sons, and the oldest dies without leaving an heir, it's in a sense expected of the next son in line to take his brother's wife to perpetuate his line. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, again, to perpetuate his line so that he doesn't lose his inheritance, but also to protect the widow because the widow, well, you know, the widows in those days were without any kind of protection, which is why there's so many commands in the Old Testament to make sure that you care for the widow and the orphan and the stranger. But you see this practiced practice put into the law of God here in Deuteronomy 25, starting in verse 5. If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family. Her husband's brother shall go into her, take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her, the duty. And it shall be that the firstborn son, which she bears will succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. But if the man does not want to take his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife go up to the gate of the elders and say, my husband's brother refuses to raise up a name for his brother in Israel. He will not perform the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders of the city shall call him and speak to him. But if he stands firm and says, I do not want to take her, Then his brother's wife shall come to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, spit in his face and answer and say, so shall it be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him who had his sandal removed. I love the Old Testament sometimes. I'm just trying to picture this, you know, go, give me that shoe. And then, boom, smack him with a shoe. And then, and now your name is the one who has no sandal or whatever, he who has no shoe. That's the point though, right? This is obviously, I mean, because what's happening here in Genesis is way before the law was given, this must have been a common practice in that culture in that day and age where this would happen. Now it's just the firstborn, right? So the brother that comes in and marries the widow, it's the firstborn of that union that inherits the dead brother's stuff. And then all the other children would be to the living husband at this point. You know, of course, you know, the Sadducees made a kind of a trap question for Jesus, right? It's like, there were seven brothers and the eldest had a wife and then he died with no sons. And then the next one and the next one and the next one, then she died. And he's like, and now whose husband is she in the afterlife? You know, you know, so that's how that goes. But we see this also in practice in the book of Ruth. If you know this, you know, of course, you know the story of Ruth, but Naomi, right, she leaves with her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons. And the husband and the two sons die. And then she goes back with the two widows. And Orpah, the one widow, leaves and goes back to her home. But Ruth, it says, clings to her and goes back. And Ruth then meets Boaz. And Naomi's like, hey, Boaz, He's like a cousin or like a brother or something. He's like a cousin. He's a close relative. You should get to know this man. So you know how the story goes, right? So they have the threshing floor incident and she in effect makes a proposal to him. And Boaz is honored at the proposal, but he's like, I am not the closest relative. There's one a little bit closer in the line than I, but if he doesn't want to take it, I'll take it. That's how that goes. And we see here in Ruth chapter four, starting in verse five, interestingly enough, just like Judah's wife doesn't have a name, this guy has no name too, right? The closer relative, he's just the no name guy, right? Then Boaz said, on the day that you buy the field from the hand of Naomi. So they agreed that this unnamed relative would buy the field from Naomi. And then Boaz says, oh, but on the day that you buy it, you got to marry Ruth as well, right? It says, on the day that you buy it, you must marry Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance. And a close relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I ruin my own inheritance. You redeem my right of redemption for yourself, for I cannot redeem it. Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. To confirm anything, one man took off his sandal. Okay, there's a shoe thing again going on. Now there's no spitting in the face here. And gave it to the other, and this was a confirmation in Israel. Therefore, the close relative said to Boaz, buy it for yourself. So he took off his sandal and Boaz said to the elders and all the people, you are witnesses this day that I have bought all that was Alimelech's and all that was Kilian's and Melon's from the hand of Naomi. Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Malon, I have acquired as my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead throughout his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brethren and from his position at the gate. You are witnesses this day." So that's the practice of Leverett marriage. going on there. And that's what Judah here is asking his son, Onan, to do. Now, just like the no-name Redeemer in the book of Ruth, Onan doesn't want to live up to his required duty here. That's what it says. It says here, verse 9, but Onan knew that the heir would not be his. See, Onan's the firstborn now, because Ur has been struck down by the Lord. So it's like, hey, I'm the firstborn. But if I take Tamar, then the first child to be born will inherit Ur's share of the inheritance, which would be two-thirds, a double portion. So it's like, I don't want to do that. So he engages in a practice. Let's just call it coitus interruptus. Okay. That's exactly what's going on here. He has no problem engaging in sexual activity with Tamar, but he doesn't finish the deed. That's essentially what's going on here. So he spills, he emits on the ground, it says here. What does the ESV say? Does he spills his semen on the ground or something like that? Okay. First of all, let me just, okay. The Bible doesn't pull any punches here. Okay. The Bible's actually quite graphic at times, right? You know, we would hear it's like, Oh, we don't want to say, you know, this is, this is not, you know, for polite conversation and, and, you know, gentle company. It's like, well, the Bible's like, look, this is what happened. Right? So Onan did all this. And we're told here that this displeases the Lord. And he dies too. Now, at least we know what Onan did. And what Onan did was he refused to perpetuate the line of his elder brother. So he gets offed too by the Lord. So now Judah's like, okay, I had three sons and now I'm down to one. And he's like, he comes up with a pretense, right? So apparently Tamar is starting to get a bit of a reputation in Judah's eyes as like some kind of black widow or some kind of, you know, curse. It's like, I don't want to give you my third son because he might die too. So he comes up with a pretense. It's like, wait a little bit until he's a little older and then I'll give him to you." And he says, go remain in your father's house. And that's what she does. And Tamar goes and dwells in her father's house. Now the irony, of course, here is, is Tamar cursed? No, she's not cursed, right? Ur did not die because Tamar was some kind of cursed woman. Ur died because he was wicked in the sight of the Lord. Onan did not die because he was married to some cursed woman. Onan died because what he did displeased the Lord and the Lord killed him. Judah here is blind to his own sin. Anybody here ever been blind to your own sin? Anybody here ever been blind to your own sin, but you're more than capable of seeing the sin in other people's lives, right? You know, what does Jesus say? Take the log out of your eye before you start talking about the speck in other people's eyes. Judah's blindness to his own sin and the sin of his sons. One of the things we're seeing here is, okay, don't forget, this is the line of promise, okay? Abraham called by God, his son Isaac, his son Jacob, and now his son Judah. These are all in the line of promise. These are the guys that Abraham said, through your seed, the world will be blessed. Are these guys model citizens at all? I mean, Abraham, probably the best of the bunch, but I mean, he obviously had his failings, right? How many times did he lie about Sarah being his sister whenever he went to a strange land? It's recorded twice, but it says in the scriptures, it says it was his practice to do this. So he probably did it way more times. We just only know of the two. Isaac, he played favorites. Jacob liked to lie a lot. These guys are not model citizens and Judah is not a model father. How do we know that? He sold his brother into slavery. Judah's not a nice guy. None of these sons are nice. Joseph's really the only nice guy. He, at least early on, was a bit of a, you know, kind of a tattletale. It's like, haha, dad likes me more than you. These are not nice guys. His sons were not nice guys. And this is what I was getting at earlier. Even though he left the dysfunction of his family, guess what? He brought his own dysfunction with him. He brought that same baggage with him and it's starting to come home to roost here. All right. Verses 12 through 23. This is the biggest part of the narrative here and it's Judah's sin. Okay. So verse 11, right? No, sorry, verse 12. 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 Edomite. 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 Shelah was grown. and she was not given to him as a wife. When Judas 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 Edulamite, 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 is 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." Okay. Now this section here is going to reveal the depth of Judah's sin toward Tamar, but it, this is, you know, this obviously contains some very icky things, right? Some very sordid details are going on here. It begins by saying in the process of time. So even in death, Judah's poor wife still doesn't get a name. She dies and Judah mourns for her for some time. And he says he was comforted. And then he goes up to his sheep shears. Now, This is probably a practice, think of, again, like Ruth, when they go to, you know, glean or when they go to, you know, for their harvest practice that they had. It was the time of in-gathering. Usually there's some celebration, there's some partying going on, you know, during the sheep shearing kind of a thing. So he goes up and he's up there with his buddy and We find out here that Judah's sin here. One thing I want to mention here, when the narrative here says the process of time, one of the things I want to get across here, and this is not something I didn't really think about until I really studied this passage, was this. Everything that's happening in Genesis 38 is running concurrently with the events of Genesis 39 to 42. Okay, so this is all happening while Joseph is rotting away in Potiphar's house and then rotting away in the prison and then, you know, all the way up to Genesis 42 when the sons come to buy grain. Because, you know, we shouldn't think that this just happened like in a month, right? I mean, three sons are born, three sons grow, they get a wife, one dies, the other dies, the other one grows up, you know. So this is taking over the course of like probably 20 years is what's happening here in Genesis 38. And all this time, Joseph is in prison. So these two events are running concurrently. Genesis 39 through 42 and Genesis 38 are happening at the same time. Because what's going to happen at the end of this, that's when Judah has the change of heart. And we're going to see how this process happens here. But the rundown of the events here in these verses here is that Judah's wife dies. While at the same time, Tamar has remained a faithful widow. She's been waiting here for Shelah to grow up so that she can be given to him as a wife. So she is remaining faithful in her widowhood. Judah then over after the morning goes up to shear his sheep. And then when Tamar realizes that Judah is coming up and that Shelah has been grown and she's been kind of cheated, this is when she starts to concoct this plan to trap Judah in his sin. Now, let's put it out here in the open. Tamar's plan is unwise, at the very least. Her plan, basically, is to dress up like a harlot and seduce her father-in-law. Right? I mean, is this something that happens in polite society? No. Now, is Tamar the grieved party? Yes, she's the grief party. She was promised to be given to Shelah when he grew up. And obviously Judah had no intention of giving Shelah to Tamar because he was in fear that Shelah would die and that his line would end at this point. So he's like, he's just hoping maybe she forgets or whatever. So she's the grief party here. But her plan to expose his sin involves more sin. Okay. Right. I don't know about you. I'm pretty sure you have, but I was taught growing up, two wrongs don't make a right. Okay. That's exactly what's happening here. Two wrongs don't make a right. So what does she do? She takes off her widow's garments and dresses like a harlot. And then lures Judah to seduce her. And Judah, because Judah does not think with anything above the beltline, he sees Tamar and says, hey, you know, how much for me to come into you? It's like, what do you give me? And she says, well, I'll give you a goat. Okay. She's like, well, Okay, but you don't have the goat with you, right? Because you're not exactly walking around with a bunch of goats when you go to visit the harlot. So I'll give you my pledge here. I'll give you my staff and here's the signet. Basically for him the signet would be like a little, think of like a stamp, maybe a rod or something that was tied to a cord that often times they would wear around the neck. And it was, basically it's like his identification, because anytime he'd need to make any kind of transaction and sign his name to it, they would just use his signet to apply his seal to it. So it's like saying, here, I'm gonna give you my wallet, my ID, my social security number, okay, as a pledge that I will pay you the goat when we're all said and done here. Now, does Tamar have any problem conceiving children through this? No, not at all. So Tamar's not cursed. Judah's still alive. And she bears, it says here that she conceives. And we're going to find out later, she actually bears twins. So Judah goes home after everything's done. He tells his friend, says, here, you need to take this goat to the prostitute that's out there. He says, I don't want to go back there. You do it. So he goes up there. And so, of course, there's no harlot. And it's like, what harlot? We don't have any harlots here. We're a clean town. What are you talking about? Timnah has blue laws, OK? We're righteous people here. Well, whatever. It's like, there's no harlot here. So Hira is like, all right, and he comes back with the goat. And Judah's like, okay, just don't worry about it. It's like, I don't want to, let's just drop this. Okay. This is embarrassing enough for me. Let's just drop it. Now, as we said earlier, Judah never intended to give Shelah to Tamar. And that's why Tamar is the grieved party. Judah treated her badly. Judah promised his youngest son and did not give it to her. So Tamar has a legitimate grievance. But again, her solution was not good. Her solution was to seduce her father-in-law. Now, Obviously, God is going to draw a lot of straight lines out of a lot of crooked sticks here. There's a lot of crooked sticks in this chapter and God is working providentially. And that's the only good news that we see here. That's the only good thing happening so far in this chapter because it ain't anything happening from these people at all. God here is providentially working through all of this, and we'll see this as the chapter ends. The thing here we need to realize is there are just some people in this world that before they repent, need to hit rock bottom, right? They need to be brought low. They need to be smacked in the side of the head with the depth of their sin and misery. And that's why, you know, when we don't preach the full weight of the law, we do people a disservice. That's the problem with the Pharisees and that's the problem with legalists is they reduce the full weight of the law so that they can then say, I've achieved it, I've accomplished it. But by doing so, you basically make God's law, at least you give it the perception that it can be achievable. And we know that it's not achievable because God requires perfection and no one can give perfection. And In Judah's case, he needed to be smacked upside the head with his sin. And we're going to see that in just the next few verses as we continue on here now in verse 24. And it came to pass. So now more time has passed. Three months later 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. Wow. Okay, that escalated quickly. 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 the cord and the staff. So Judah acknowledged them and said, she has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Shelah, my son. And he never knew her again. That means he never had relations. Okay. He didn't go back into her again at this point. Okay. So here is, I'm going to say this, this is, this is, Judah's kind of like David and Nathan moment. Okay. If you know the story of David and Nathan, after David had the affair with Bathsheba and at the end of chapter 11 in 2 Samuel, it said, the thing that David did displeased the Lord. That's the only time you see the Lord's name mentioned in that chapter. Then chapter 12, Nathan comes in the name of the Lord to convict David of his sin. And he tells him a little story about the two people, one with one little sheep that he treated like a member of the family. The other guy had so many sheep he didn't know what to do with. And the guy with so many sheep said, hey, I've got a friend coming over. I'm going to take your sheep and I'm going to use that to serve my friend. And David's like, that man should be, kill that man. And of course, Nathan says, you're the man, right? It's kind of what's going on here, right? Jude is like, your daughter-in-law has played the harlot and now she's pregnant because of her harlotry. And he's like, bring her out and let her be burned. Now there's probably two things working out here. One, Judah's looking for a way to get out of having to give his youngest son to Tamar. So he's like, hey, this is the perfect opportunity. If she's dead, then I can just give her to whoever I want. But as we know here, Tamar springs the trap and she's like, Hey, I've got this cord and I've got this signet and I've got this staff. And she puts them in front of Judah and says, can you tell me whose these are? And that's when Judah's like, that's basically saying, you're the man, Judah. You are the man. And the question is very similar to the question that the brothers asked Jacob in Genesis 37, when they brought the bloody robe of many colors. And they said to Jacob, can you identify whose this is? Right? And Jacob's like, oh, it's my son's. He's dead. A lion has eaten him. So on and so forth. So Tamar springs her trap when she asked Judah to identify the signet in the staff. And Judah, as I said, like his great, great, great, great, great, great grandson, David, finally admits his sin. He finally is confronted with his sin. And when he says here, she is more righteous than I. Now, It doesn't mean that she's righteous, sinless, right? Obviously she's not sinless, but in this affair, right? She's more righteous than Judah because she is, again, as I said, the aggrieved party here. So Judah, like David, was confronted with the sin and upon being confronted, he recognized finally his sin and misery. And as I said, some of us need to hit that rock bottom. Some of us just, you know, will not pick up the clue phone until our world starts falling apart around us. And that's here, in this case, Judah. And Judah cannot move on. In fact, Judah cannot do what the Lord wants him to do until he hits this point in this narrative. until he recognizes that, yes, I acted wrong in this scenario. Moreover, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. God cannot use Judah later on in the narrative until he brings him to this point and gets him to confess his sin and to acknowledge that, yes, I am a sinner. Now the Lord in his grace and his mercy confronts us with our sins, right? He's like, well, I don't like being confronted with my sin. Well, no one likes being confronted with their sin. But until you confront your sin and deal with it, then you've got that obstacle between you and the Lord. You have to deal with your sin. You've got to confess that. If you don't confess it, then, you know, you're going to be, you're going to continue in the wilderness. You're going to be, you're going to continue living among the Canaanites in a sense, like Judah here is. So the Lord in his grace and mercy allows this to happen. And this is the good that he's bringing out of this. Okay. Nothing that's happening here, Judah's not sinless. Tamar's not sinless. Nothing happening here is good, but the Lord is bringing good out of it. by getting Judah to this point where he confesses and acknowledges his sin. So that leaves us then with the final four verses here, which I'm calling Judah's legacy. Because it says that Judah, at the end of verse 26, he never knew her again. So she's going to bear his children. And it says he never knew. In other words, he didn't take her as a substitute wife at this point. 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 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, which means breach or breakthrough. Afterward, his brother came out who had the scarlet thread in his hand and his name was called Zira. So this is Judah's legacy, Judah's breakthrough, if you want to call it that. It's kind of a cool name. I don't know if you think that's a cool name being called breakthrough, breach. Hello, this is my son Breach, breakthrough. I know it's kind of cool because of what's going to happen here. She conceives and gives birth to twins. And in typical Genesis fashion, Genesis likes to mess with firstborns. Okay, so the firstborn, Zerah, reaches out his hand, and he pulls it back, and at that moment, Peres is like, here's my opportunity! Ha! I leap out of the womb! I'm the firstborn! You know, it's almost like Jacob grabbing the heel of his brother, he's like, no, let me come out first! So he, you know, There's this problem with the firstborn in the line of promise. The firstborn is often never given the status of the firstborn. So Zerah, he reached out his hand first, but was supplanted by his brother Peres, who, as it says here, came out unexpectedly. So Peres is given this name, which means breakthrough. And Judah's legacy is going to rest on this little breakthrough named Peres. Now Judah's breakthrough in a sense was the recognition of his sin, because what happens to Judah in this 20 year span is going to set him up for what's going to happen in Genesis 43, where effectively what Judah does is He stands, as it says, I will be a surety for Benjamin, your son. Well, isn't that what Jesus does for us, right? Doesn't he stand as a surety for us? He stands in our place. He says, you know, I will take care of the younger brother. And if anything happens to him, let his, you know, price, let his life, you know, be taken upon me. So Judah will stand as a surety for his younger brother, just as his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, many, many, many greats grandson, Jesus will stand as a surety for us. We also see that in this experience, I think Judah will get a little more empathy for his father, Jacob, because he goes back home. We know that because when everything is happening in the later chapters, Judah's back home. And he probably has a newfound empathy for his father, right? Jacob lost a son, right? At least as far as he's concerned, he lost a son. He also lost a wife too. And here Judah loses two sons, loses a wife. And so maybe a newfound understanding there. Because sometimes, you know, sometimes you just don't have that empathy for somebody unless you kind of go through a little bit of what they've gone through too, right? Then you kind of say, now I know how you feel. I don't know exactly how I feel, but I've got an idea. But more importantly, I think we're going to see here how the Lord works providentially through all of this, because Perez is going to be the one who is now in the line of promise. Him being the firstborn of Judah and Judah, in a sense, At least the line of Messiah and kingship is going to come through him. We'll see that in Genesis 49 when Jacob blesses his sons. He says of Judah, the ruler's scepter shall not depart from you. So it's almost like a dual firstborn son thing going on between Judah and Joseph. Because Joseph's given the double portion, one for each of his sons, but Judah's given this special blessing of the kingship line. And that's going to take us all the way through Jesus. So if you still have Ruth there, I want to go back to Ruth because there's more things I want to read at the end of the book of Ruth there. Starting in verse 12, we stopped at verse 10 earlier when we looked at Ruth 4. So in Ruth chapter 4 verse 12, this is after Boaz has declared that he has taken Ruth the Moabitess as his wife. And we see the people at the gate saying, may your house, Boaz, be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring, which the Lord will give you from this young woman. Interesting. Why would they say be like the house of Perez? I have no idea. Other than that Perez is in the line of Kings, right? He's given the kingly, he's in the kingly line through Judah. And of course they're in the land of Judah, right? So these are, you know, in the, in the province that where Judah would be. And then, then you, we have Ruth ends with a bit of a genealogy and notice that in verse 18. Now this is the genealogy of Perez. Now it doesn't begin with Jacob. It begins with Perez, Judah's son. Perez begot Hezron. Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot Aminadab. Aminadab begot Nashon. Nashon begot Salmon. Salmon begot Boaz. Boaz begot Obed. Obed begot Jesse. And Jesse begot, who's that guy there? That's David, right? That's the great king. This Ruth happens in the period of the judges, right? We know what happens in the period of judges, right? Everyone did what was right in their own eyes because there was no king in the land. We need a king. And here you have this kind of, again, this sort of foreshadowing of this man who's going to be king, David. Not just king, The greatest king, right? He is the greatest king of Israel. He is the one who is a man after God's own heart. If you read through 1st and 2nd Kings, all the kings of Judah, if they have done well, if they're really good, instead of them. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just like his father, David, right? If he did okay, then he, you know, he's compared to his actual father. But if he did really good, think of like Hezekiah, think of Jehoshaphat, think of Josiah. They're compared to David. Okay. David is the greatest king of the land, but it gets even better than that. Turn to Matthew 1. So Matthew chapter 1 begins in this way, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David and the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, not Joseph, Judah and his brothers, Judah begot, oh, hey, look, there's Perez and Zerah by Tamar. You don't see women's names mentioned in genealogies. I'm just going to say that right there. And there's, there's a woman in, in the genealogy. Paris begot Hezron. Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot Amenadab. Amenadab begot Nashon. Nashon begot Salmon. Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab. Oh, there's another woman's name. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Another woman's name. Obed begot Jesse. Jesse begot David, the king. David begot King Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. Translation, Bathsheba, another woman's name. And it goes on and on. And finally you have at the end there, verse 16, and Joseph and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, another woman, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Perez is in the line, not only of King David, but obviously because Jesus is the son of David, he's in the line of Jesus. He is in this genealogy that we see here in Matthew one, that takes you from Abraham to Christ. And, of course, you have these women also mentioned in the genealogy, Tamar, right? And what does this say of Jesus? Well, it says that Jesus is descended from sinners and prostitutes. And who did Jesus come to save? sinners and prostitutes, okay? Who are the people that Jesus hung out around with a lot that the Pharisees were like, this guy is a sinner because he hangs out with sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes. Now we know Jesus didn't condone these things, but the sinners flocked to Jesus because Jesus actually cared for them, unlike the actual religious leaders of their day. The point of all this is that, think about this, God wanted to save us, right? Salvation is brought into this world because of Adam's fall, and now because of Adam's fall, we're all fallen. And God's plan, which was not plan B, it was always plan A from the very beginning, was to have Jesus come in human form. So in order for him to come in human form, God has got to work with what? Sinners and prostitutes to get this to happen, right? God is working with the material that he has, and he is overriding all of this sin in order to bring Jesus into the world, which is a wonderful thing. And Jesus here, being in the line of sinners and prostitutes, these are the very people he came to save, which is also a very wonderful thing. But more importantly, We are saved when we recognize, like Judah recognized that Tamar was more righteous than I, we're saved when we recognize that Jesus is more righteous than I, right? Because if you don't recognize that Jesus is more righteous than you, then you are on the self-righteousness program, which is not a good program to be on, okay? Self-righteousness, get you as far as the Pharisees. That's what Jesus said in Matthew 5. But what does he say? He says, your righteousness has to be above that. So if you're on the self-righteousness program, that only gets you so far. And it's probably not even close to the kingdom of heaven. You need something that exceeds that. You get that when you recognize that Jesus is more righteous than you, and then you receive that righteousness through faith. So I'll stop here.