This morning we again have a wonderful privilege to reflect upon the words of the Lord himself from our brother, Dr. Telfer from Westminster. He's preached for us many times before. I think last time, was it last? It was Old Testament before, right? I think it's always Old Testament, which is good. So we're going back to Genesis this morning. So welcome Dr. Telfer and let's hear what God has to say to us this morning. Praise the Lord, he gives us his gospel in both the New and in the Old Testament. I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters at Westminster Seminary, the faculty and staff and students there. It's good to see Caleb here this morning, serving amongst others. I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 38. And while you're turning, let me invite you to come visit the seminary, not only to visit the bookstore, which is always a rich resource, and the library there. Make use of that when you need. But also, if you haven't been there in the last year and a half, to see the new housing. There's new apartment buildings there. There's a lot going on and big changes and children running around. It's been a wonderful time of change and growth. So we're rejoicing in that. We'd love to have you come and show you around. The background for Genesis 38, before we read, of course, is if you look at the end of 37, is that Judah has just led his brothers into enslaving Joseph, their half-brother, and selling him off into Egypt. And at the end, then, he takes the coat of his brother, this special jacket of some sort, this identifying marker of Joseph, and they bloody it, and they take it and use it to deceive their father very cruelly, covering up their own crimes and putting their father into mourning. This is, shall we say, a PG-rated Bible text and topic this morning. And children, if you have questions, I encourage you to talk with your parents afterwards. But it is of great comfort to us as we see God's Word displaying the failures and the sins of our forefathers in the faith, rather in unvarnished fashion. But even here amidst all this chaos and really bizarre and very profoundly sinful events, we see the grace and the promises of the gospel and we come looking for the comfort of the gospel even in a passage such as this. Would you hear then God's word as we read it together from Genesis chapter 38. Hear the word of the Lord. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adalamite whose name was Hira. Then Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went in to her. And she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Ur. She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. Juna was in Kezib when she bore him. And 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 put him to death. And then Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her and raise up offspring for your brother. But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. And so whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord and he put him to death also. And then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah my son grows up, for he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died. And when Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheep shearers, he and his friend Hira the Adolamite. And when Tamar was told your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Aniim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown. up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. And when Judas saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, Come, let me come into you, for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, What will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock. And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it. He said, what pledge shall I give you? She replied, your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand. And so he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him. Then she rose and went away. Taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood. And when Judah sent the young goat by his friend, the Adolamite, to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who is in Anahim at the roadside? And they said, no cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I've not found her. Also, the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here. And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her. About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality. And Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. And as she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, by the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant. And she said, please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff. Then Judah identified them, and said, She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah, and he did not know her again. And when the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first. But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. And therefore, his name was called Perez. And afterward, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand. And his name was called Zerah, thus far the reading of the word of God. Would you bow your hearts with me in prayer? Let's pray for God's blessing. Lord, you are the lifter up of our heads. And we pray that you would take this strange and unusual passage and that you would expose us, that you would instruct us, that you would comfort us, Lord. We ask that you would show us Jesus that we might have strong comfort amidst the waves and the buffeting shocks of this life, amidst the failures and setbacks of this life. Oh, Lord, help us. Help us. Convince us of your willingness to do us good through Christ, the one that you plan from all eternity, your son from your own heart, with whom you had a covenant to rescue a people before you created the world. We thank you for that, Jesus, Lord. We thank you for him. That's son of Judah. Oh Lord, speak to us, help us, instruct us, give us ears to hear, hearts to believe, we pray for his sake. Amen. Brothers and sisters, well loved by our Lord Jesus Christ. As we see these massive failures and foibles of our forebearers in the faith, we get a kind of a backwards encouragement. At the seminary in recent months, we've been considering the patriarchs. So this message doesn't just kind of, I didn't choose this message just to shock you today, but we've been meditating as a community on the patriarchs. And often it seems it's more the failures of the patriarchs than their great acts of faith. For example, Abraham. We think of Abraham as our father in the faith. We think of this man who was quite willing to let his wife sleep with another man as long as he himself wouldn't be killed. He has little care. for his wife's honor. He has little faith, it seems, so often in that promise that it's going to be through his own seed, through this woman, that the nations will be blessed, and yet he's so willing to compromise her. It is of encouragement to me, it is an encouragement to you as a believer, that God has favor on spiritual screw-ups. like the patriarchs, and so often, it seems, like us. This passage here in 38 is a long list of Judah's sins. The old Jewish rabbis had a day where they would mourn the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. That's important to me. I teach Greek and I teach Hebrew. And we might think that's very strange. We love Bible translation. We finance that. We do the Bible translation. But why would they be so concerned to mourn the translation of the Bible into Greek? Because as you can see, what does it do when you can read it? Now the whole world, not just the Jews, but now the whole world can see all the failures of the Jewish patriarchs. And it was a day of shame in their mind as these stories came into the lingua franca of that time. Friends, I invite you to consider for a few minutes with me this topic of this chapter under two headings. First, the sins of our father of the patriarch, Judah, and then the faith of our matriarch, Tamar. First, we'll consider the sins of Judah, and then we'll consider the faith of our mother in the faith, Tamar. And just to kind of put my cards down, I'm going to suggest that Tamar's strange action, Tamar's bold action in dressing up like a prostitute, was an act of faith, an act of faith forcing Judah to fulfill his obligations to her, claiming in this strange way, demanding her place by faith as a matriarch in that Abrahamic line that God had promised to bless. This is an act of faith holding to the promised line that she had become a part of. And we'll see at the end of the chapter as God blesses the birth of those sons, this strange double birth, that indeed it does show God's favor on her. So let's begin with verse one, and we see even there, we see the beginning of this long list of Judah's sins. It starts by saying there that Judah, turned aside. We see the same thing, the same expression in verse 16. It says he turns aside to the prostitute. And this is such a picture of myself. This is such a picture of yourself. By nature, left to our fallen impulses, we turn aside to so many temptations. We are spiritually stupid, and we follow after false gods. It is no unnecessary exercise that we discipline ourselves to pray every day, oh Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Left to ourselves, we not only walk, but we run into temptation, and it's a fatal threat to us. It says also in verse 1, it says that Judah went down. Judah went down from his brothers. That's not only a geographical descent. His brothers at that time are living up in the highlands of Judah, the southern end of that central valley that runs down Palestine. They're living in the area of Hebron. He does descend, as we see, to Adullam. He meets this Adullamite. The cities are significant here. There are three of them mentioned in this passage. Adullam was one of the Canaanite city-states that later on Joshua conquers. It's mentioned in Joshua 12.15. But this entire story as its geographical setting, that it's called the Shephelah, that hilly country between the highlands and the Philistine plains. So this is the area of conflict. Lots of the stories in the Old Testament take place in these valleys between Philistia on the coast and the highlands, and that's what's going on here. There's a conflict between the believers in the hill country, so to speak, and the unbelievers down in the low country. This is quite a picture of us, of God's people in every age, that we live in the world, but we're not of the world. There's this constant interaction and conflict, as it were, between us. But more importantly than the geography, verse one, when it says that Judah goes down, he descended, this is a moral descent. He goes amongst the pagans and what does he do? He starts living like the pagans. Unfortunately, you and I have this same temptation that we, if God does not sustain us, we lose this antithesis. God has set us apart from the world to be different. and we often lose this antithesis. Judah, we see, abandons his, he abandons the church, he abandons the believing community, he identifies with the world, but we've already started to see in such strong ways his unbelief in chapter 37. I want you to imagine taking your sibling, your half-sibling, okay, but then selling him as a slave to Egypt. Now, this is virtually a death sentence. To be a slave in Egypt is to be virtually a death sentence. They didn't know what was gonna happen to him. Often slaves in the mines, they died within a short time. Who cares about our brother? We'll just sell him off for silver. not just taking his vengeance on his own young brother, but imagine how cruel this Judah is to his own father. Just imagine what a heartless son he is. He takes the jacket of the preferred son, dips it in blood, sends it to his father, and says, what happened to your son? Identify this. And he sets his father into years and years of sadness and mourning. What a cruel child. What a heartless son. Unfortunately, I think some of us have children who have done us very wrongly. We know some of the bitterness of this, right? But this is extreme. This is extreme. In our extended family, there's one individual who has completely turned his back on the family and hasn't seen the family in 20 years. It's just killing part of my family, not my parents, but other folk in the extended family. It's been terrible. It's been terrible. Judah's sins are very apparent right from the start. But how just of God, who causes what goes around to come around, And how ironic that the same thing that Judah commits comes back upon him. Tamar uses Judah's own property against him, does he not? If you look at chapter 38, verse 25, the wording there is almost exactly the same as chapter 37, verse 32. It says, please identify whose these are. That's rather humorous. Something else that's rather humorous, although unspeakably tragic also, is the way that liberal scholars, in the 20th century particularly, have seen Genesis 38. There's a lot of ink spilled basically saying, Genesis 38 has nothing to do, or almost nothing to do, with Genesis as a whole has kind of been hastily stitched in. Perhaps you're familiar with these debates about the J-E-D-P theory and source criticism and how Genesis is a stitching together of all these speculative documents. Well, this is absurd. And it shows the weakness of that kind of liberal unbelieving approach. If you just take a little time, you'll see how very tightly connected, rather, this chapter is to everything else in this whole section of of Genesis. You'll note, for example, the way that Judah is put in parallel to Joseph in the chapter that follows. So what is it? Joseph is also faced with a woman who puts him in a, who sexually tempts him. But what does Joseph do? Joseph resists that temptation And he unwillingly leaves a piece of his personal property, identifying property, behind in a way that's used as evidence of a crime, a supposed crime, against him. Can you see the contrast then? Isn't it so parallel? Here Judah willingly gives in to the surreptitious temptation of Tamar and willingly leaves his personal property with her and the differences between the two are extraordinarily strong. Chapter 38 is very tied in with the bigger story here. We move into chapter, in verse two of chapter 38, and we see, again, the sins of Judah. We see that he marries a pagan woman, in verse two. Now, to marry a pagan woman, if I can put it that blunt way, which is politically incorrect, is, according to Malachi chapter two, verse 11, a daughter of a foreign god. in Old Testament times, and dare I say, even now in New Testament times, it is a serious business for a believer to marry outside the covenant community. Judah has no concern for the spiritual influences on his children, and I would plead with you, if you are single, if you want to be married someday, I beg you not to marry outside the Christian faith. This is a very serious business. It's an infidelity. You're showing your lack of faith and you're being unfaithful to your covenant commitment to your Lord and your connection with the church. To give the care of your future children to an unbeliever? It's a very serious business. It bears bitter fruits. How I've seen it again and again in the lives of my congregation members and my extended family as well. Serious business. Judah has no excuse. Judah knows what his uncle Esau had done. He knew how his uncle had displeased grandfather Isaac by marrying pagan women. He knew this. He knew that it would displease his father Jacob. But it says there in verse two, He saw, he took, he went into this unnamed Canaanite woman. This, what shall I call it, lusty mating of Judah is described in this, it's very similarly described in Genesis 6, 2, where these so-called sons of God who act like tyrant kings, it says they see and they take any women they want in harem fashion. This is not a, This is not an honorable description of Judah. Judah is very similar to his great-great-grand-nephew who lived just a valley over, called Samson, who had a roving eye and a very out-of-control libido. But let us be inclusive here. It's not just men who fall into such things. This begins with our Mother Eve. It says, she looked and she took. That's where the problem was, right here. It started right here. The church is in bad shape. in Genesis 38, the very existence of the people of God is at stake in a number of different ways. Physically, it is possible that they might be wiped out. You'll remember over in chapter 34 that Judah, excuse me, that Simeon, Levi, they have engaged in genocide and wiped out a people and they themselves are in fear of being wiped out. This is a reality. But even worse than, or even more insidiously, chapter 38 shows us that there is a greater, there is a threat to God's people, not just by overt persecution. Appreciate that we prayed for our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world today. We think particularly of the Chinese churches at this particularly crucial time of testing for them. But what do we see? What is the temptation for the church in chapter 38? And it's the same temptation for us and for our children today. And that is assimilation. It's for just evaporating and becoming just like the world. That's a beautiful thing for us today. This is not a matter of ethnicity. It's not a question of of the racial, shall we say, or the national background of all of us. Matter of fact, it's a glory that in the church we have folk here today from all over the place. Our great, great, great grandparents come from Europe and Asia, come from Africa, come from North and South America. We represent the whole world, and we read of those promises in Isaiah, did we not, just a minute ago, that the world would come into the church, and we are here, at the ends of the world, worshiping God, right here's the ocean. The gospel has come, it has come to the ends of the earth, literally, right here. Praise the Lord for that. So it's not an ethnic question. Listen to how Peter describes us. We, international, multi-ethnic believers, he says in 1 Peter 2 verse 9, you are a chosen race. Notice the racial term there, now it's expanded. We, you believers, you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, or a peculiar people, love that. that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light. God has taken you and he's set you apart that you might shine, that you might be distinct from the world, that you might have an antithesis between you and the world in terms of what you value, in terms of who you are, in terms of where you get your identification. But Judah, Unbelieving Judah has no care for this. He not only will take an unbelieving wife for himself, but what does he do then? As we read on, he takes an unbelieving wife for his son. Another woman from this dominant Canaanite culture, which is thoroughly committed to worshiping and serving other gods. What a contrast to Judah's father, Jacob, who traveled to the, as it were, the ends of the earth to get a believing wife for himself. And here, Judah just takes whoever's, it seems, takes whatever pagan woman for his own son. Perhaps Genesis 38 is a reminder to the original readers of this book of Genesis, of the Pentateuch, which is of course the Israelites as they're coming out of Egypt, giving them a reminder. Why did God put you in Egypt all those years? One reason is to keep them separate, right? To keep his people separate so that they would not assimilate into the world as we're sure to happen. It's a very deep temptation, and it's easy for you if you go on a short-term missions trip to Haiti, for example, or to Bujumbura, or wherever you go, it's always easy to see how the churches of other cultures are assimilating into their culture. It's easy to see the weaknesses of other churches. It's hard to see our weaknesses. What ways are you tempted to assimilate into the unbelieving culture around you? I'm not talking about that you, you know, it's not a matter of just exactly what we wear or what we eat or something like that, but the values. There's a temptation for you and for me to adopt the things that our unbelieving neighbors that are their ultimate good, to make the good things of this world our ultimate good. This is a great temptation, to assimilate to the values of the world around us. It's remarkable. It's remarkable. Oh Lord, cause me to see how I am being influenced. Lord, cause me to see how my family is being washed, is being washed over by the values of this world. and I'm being made worldly. We're being made worldly very quickly. It's a great temptation. The list just continues through this entire chapter. You may not notice, maybe this is a bit geeky, but the name for his firstborn son is actually the word for evil, wickedness, spelled backwards. Odd. This is a wicked son. He's prominently wicked and God marks him out for an early and prominent death, kind of like the men of Sodom. And then we see that his second son as well is another unbelieving, godless man. We see that through his sexual behavior. Now, this is a shame on Judah that so quickly his sons would be so wicked. What does that say about him? Like son, like father, like son. Let's think for a second about this behavior of Onan. We call this a leverate marriage. That's the technical term. Lever, evidently, is a Latin term for your husband's brother. And it was surely a custom in the ancient Near East that when a young man who is married dies, that his brother would take the wife, marry her, and raise up children, particularly a son, who would take the place of the first husband. This was important, evidently, for inheritance rights, and it gave a kind of a social immortality to the person who died young. There were certain values behind this. Now, it is possible to refuse this duty. You may remember the story in Ruth, chapter 4, verses 5 through 8, where this near relative refuses Ruth. Remember that? because he doesn't want to damage his own inheritance. So it's possible to refuse this. We read of this also refusing it in Genesis, excuse me, Deuteronomy 25 verses 5 through 10. It's possible to refuse, but it's shameful to refuse. So what does Onan do? Surprise, surprise. Onan does exactly what his father does. On the outside, he does what is respectable, but on the inside, he is self-serving and abusive. He doesn't care a lick for the people involved. He's only interested in his own advantages. He knows that by marrying Temar, he's going to damage the inheritance of his own children, But he goes along with it on the outside, and yet in the bedroom he makes sure that he's not going to conceive by her. This is a sexual abuse of Tema. Now, there are a number of church traditions which use this example, this well-known example of coitus interruptus. as the basis of a moral teaching that every ejaculation must have the potential of producing offspring. But I think if we go down that road, we've made the mistake of trying to draw out prescriptive principles from descriptive histories. Are you with me? You've got to be careful with that. We can't necessarily draw out ethics from a particular story. That's not the purpose here. To jump into, for example, modern discussions of masturbation or modern discussions of conception control, just from this, that conception control is necessarily wrong, is reading way too much into this story, it seems to me. What is his failure? What is his sin? Who is he offending in this act? He is offending against his dead brother, first. He is offending against his extended family, secondly. And he is offending against Tamar. Tamar, as all women, we see the expectation implicit in texts like Exodus 21, verse 10. Tamar, as a wife, has the right to expect sex from her husband and also the normal consequences of sex, which is, of course, children. This is a proper Right that women can expect from their husbands at least at some point But if you look closely at verse 9 Onan has it's not this is not a question of let's delay having kids for a couple of years while we finish up our studies or something like that this is he has no intention of fulfilling his fatherly husbandly duty whatsoever you can see his intention there in verse 9 and Onan is taking away life from the future generations, and God takes away life from him. This is a shame on Judah. It's another exposing of Judah's pagan mindset and his unbelief You can see so much of his sins here. Notice, did you notice the great contrast between Judah and his own father? How does Judah react to his own deaths, the deaths of his sons? He's like a stone. There's nothing. He doesn't cry. He doesn't mourn. What does he do? He puts the blame on Tamar. He goes beyond that. Instead of his father, who wept for months, here's a man who doesn't weep at all. And here's a man who's superstitious. He blames Tamar. He thinks Tamar is unlucky in some way. And so he does exactly what Onan does. On the outside, he plays the righteous man. Oh, okay. Oh, go back to your father. Live like a divorced woman. Go back to your family of origin. And then I will give my son to you when he gets of old. He makes all the right promises on the outside. But you know from the beginning, what is his intention? No. He has no concern for Tamar. And it says, Very important line in verse 14 speaks about Tamar not being given to him in marriage. That's what provokes her. That's the key. He lies to her, and he mistreats her, and he's putting her off unfairly. Judas, Judah, like Judas. Judas is the Greek form of Judah, by the way. Sorry about that. That was a mistake on my part. But Judah is outwardly righteous and inwardly unbelieving. And I don't need to spend a lot of time on his other obvious sins. His going into a prostitute, in verse 16, obviously his sin of lust. His leaving, his identifying his own cord. And his own signet, which is a little bit of, which is probably a, it's a little cylinder that you tie onto your shoulder here with a strap. And this is illiterate society, and you take it and you use it like as a signature on a piece of clay. It has a distinctive, when you put it on clay, it has a distinctive impress. And his staff. This is the sin of foolishness. This is like a man who would leave all his credit cards at a whorehouse. This is very stupid. This is just absurd. Then look on down to verse 24. This is very serious. We have the Me Too movement now calling out men for their abuse. Look at Judah's double standard here. Judah himself feels no remorse at sexual sin and of going to a prostitute, but what is his attitude toward his daughter-in-law? We see that she's still a part of his house because he has legal authority over her, obviously. He doesn't even give her a trial. He doesn't even listen to her. He condemns her immediately and says, he gives her a punishment which was probably worse than the average punishment in that society at that time. He has not only, this is his way of getting rid of trouble in his family. It's extremely irresponsible, but it's murderous. This is the sin of murder, it seems. This is a terrible sin against her, right? What is Judah concerned with in verse 23? Judah is concerned about his public reputation. He doesn't want to be a laughingstock. And we can relate to that, I'm sure. But God, in his strange providence, he causes exactly what Judah fears to come back on his own head. He does indeed become an absurd laughingstock He is exposed and made to look bad in public as we come to the end of this chapter. Chapter 38 of Genesis shows us very clearly the sins of our patriarch Judah and many of our own sins and temptations as well. But I'd like for you to consider this passage with me briefly and more importantly, as a display of the faith, the faith of our matriarch, Tamar. Understanding this chapter, it seems to me, the key verse is verse 26. This is the interpretive key to the chapter. Judah himself, who lives through this, he gives the interpretation of Tamar. This is the title of our sermon today. He says, she is more righteous than I. Or in effect, he's saying, she is righteous and I am not righteous. This is the key. I'm not righteous. She is, why is she righteous? Because I didn't give her my son, Sheila. He recognizes that she did right. that she had a proper claim on him and that he has failed in his duty to her. She has forced his hand, but he had a duty to her and he's failed. Now, there's a lot of scholarship that's gone into the backgrounds of this. There are some, such as the Dutch commentator Alders, who thinks that in that culture at that time, the leveret responsibility, in other words, for one brother to marry the widow, that that responsibility was not just for the brother, but for the father. That the Hittites did that, the Assyrians had something like that, it seems. You may believe that, you may not, that's speculative perhaps, Be that as it may, Judah recognizes, for whatever reason, that Tamar has a proper claim on him. He recognizes that Tamar is righteous. Tamar is righteous. Tamar is like Ruth. That outsider coming from outside the church who comes to the people of God and says, your God will be my God. She clings by faith and she's willing to put herself in a sexually compromised position. You remember that where she comes at night and puts herself at the feet of Boaz? It's a strange situation and an act of faith. Tamar is like Rahab. Rahab, That woman from outside the church, that prostitute, who recklessly identifies with the people of God in order to connect herself with them. She deceives her own people. So we can see that somehow Tamar has heard the gospel. Somehow Tamar has heard that God has made promises to this line, this family, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, that the seed, that that child, that one who's coming, who's going to crush the serpent's head, that was promised in Genesis 3, 15, that there's a connection to this family line. And Tamar, when she was married off to Ur, she was offered what position? Not just, let's get married. She was offered the position of marrying Judah's firstborn son and bearing his heir, his firstborn, the firstborn grandson of Judah, who would carry on the promises of Judah. And now, after all the ups and the downs that this family has gone through, she still clings to these promises. This is extraordinary. This is extraordinary. Even after all the abuse, married to a wicked man, then married to another wicked man who mistreats her, and then her father-in-law mistreats her, oh my word, and she still wants to be connected to this family. This is extraordinary faith. Have you known people who've suffered at the hands of other Christians and then just they abandon the faith? Something goes well, they don't like the pastor, they don't like an elder or something, you know, some brother or sister says something and then what? They're out of there. So often we can have so little appreciation for the honor that it is for us to be identified with the people of God. Brothers and sisters, for you to have the water of baptism on you, Children, for you to be marked out, you've been forgiven your sins. Baptism marks you out that you belong to Jesus. You're His. If you're a little older, those of you that have the privilege of eating at this table, this marks you out as being connected to God. This is the highest privilege that you have. This, whatever you've achieved at school, whatever you've achieved in your career, whatever you've achieved in your military service, that's nothing compared to the honor that you have here. To be a recipient of the promises of God, of all the benefits that you enjoy in this life and that go on to the end of the ages, this is massive. And you see Tamar, even Tamar coming from that pagan background, she caught a glimpse of this. She said, I'm not letting anything stand in my way. I'll do anything to keep my connection with Christ in the church. She's willing to do desperate things to be connected to the church. Now think for a second. She had every opportunity to turn back. How much more comfortable it would have been to turn back? Did she have to marry Ur? No. Did she have to marry Onan? Certainly not. She could have stayed. Did she have to wait for Sheila? How many years must she have waited? She could have turned back and married one of the local boys at any time she wanted, and yet she waits and waits and waits. Brothers and sisters, How much do you value your connection to the church? How much do you value your connection to the visible people of God? How patient are you when you see the sins of one another? And if this is the kind of forebears that we have in the faith, should we be surprised when there's real trouble in the churches? When we see people who make a Christian profession doing terrible things? Should it surprise us? Of course not. We are weak, we are tempted by unbelief, just like Judah was, right? We're fundamentally no different. But Tamar, Tamar is a woman of faith. Tamar is a woman who's willing to endure, who's willing to wait, to be faithful. Tamar is a woman, we could say in the words of 1 Timothy 2, verse 15, who is saved through childbearing. She wants to be so connected to that family, which has the promised line, and she's willing to wait. And when in verse 14 she sees that there's no other way, she acts in desperate faith. She will have Judah's heir, no matter what it takes. And so, like Sarah is described in Hebrews 11, verse 11, she received power to conceive. This is God's blessing on her, and she becomes a matriarch by faith. No matter how objectionable or scandalous we might find her outward behavior, She triumphs and becomes the mother of Messiah. We see God's blessing on her action and her faith as we see the birth at the end of the chapter of these twins, of this strange delivery room situation. I have been to the delivery room four times. And for all of you mothers and most of you fathers, perhaps you know that it can be a crazy place and lots of strange stuff goes on, but this is a very strange thing. Here, one punches his fist out, gets tagged by the attending, what word do you call them? I don't know, Lamaze, the birth attendant or whatever. There's all kinds of that. The doula, I don't know, okay, we have lots of names for this. Wonderful, amazing role. And then what happens? The one inside basically gives the elbow to the one who's about ready to come out, literally. And it says he was peres. Peres means to break forth. He pushes his way. No, I will be. Like his mother, right? I will do whatever it takes to get that promise. Now, what other birth of twins have we had a very strange situation? It happened just recently here from this point of view. Who was grabbing his brother's heel as he came out? Remember that? It was Jacob, right? So is this some accident? No, brothers and sisters, this is prophecy. This is prophecy. Here is Judah. His father was born a twin in a prophetic action. His sons are born twins in a prophetic action. It's highlighting Judah. Judah, Judah, Judah is being highlighted by this miraculous, strange, prophetic, births of his sons and of his father. And where, as you read the ongoing story, where is this going? That the promise of the Messiah is to this Judah? This fornicator Judah? This heartless Abusive man, Judah, to his daughter-in-law, to his own father, this slave trader, kidnapper? Yes, yes, yes. As amazing as it is, the promises are to this man, Judah. God shows grace to him. God shows grace to us through him. Amazing, amazing grace. Verse 26 is an amazing thing. He says, she is righteous and I am not. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to show, to connect the pieces all together. But of course, this chapter 38, how many years does it take to have three kids, one grows up? This is 20 years or so. This is a long passage. A lot of time takes place. What's happening down in Egypt during this time? all these 20 years, right? God is preparing Joseph in Egypt to receive his family, then the famine, there's all these things that are happening, and if you put it together more or less, You'll see that as we come to the end of 38, we're coming to that time when Judah is getting ready to go with his brothers down to Egypt. But look at 26. 26, it seems to me, verse 26 of 38, is Judah's conversion. God has crushed him, exposed him, and now Judah repents. Judah is converted. He's broken. He's opened to the grace of God, and praise the Lord, this is the beginning of a new life for Judah. You can even see it in that verse. It says he didn't go into her anymore. His sexual ways are reformed. He's a different man in how he treats women. But even more movingly, do you remember in chapter 43, what is Judah's role in the drama as the people go to Egypt? Listen to what he says to his father in chapter 43 verses 8 and 9. He says to his father, who's doubting, right? His father doesn't want to send Benjamin down. Why? Because his father has lost a son in Joseph. Because his father has already lost a son in Simeon. His father has lost two sons. And what's happening? The third son is threatened. Now who else lost two sons and has the third son threatened? Who lost Ur? Who lost Onan? Who was afraid for Shelah? Here's a man who goes to his own father and says, father, I know what you're going through. I've lost two sons as well. I know what it means to have that third son be threatened. But father, you got to do what's right. You got to do what's right. Father, I offer you this. Listen to what he says in 43, eight and nine. He says, send the boy with me. I will be a pledge for his safety. 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. Isn't that beautiful? Here's this man who is so selfish and abusive. Now he says, let me be the substitute. I will stand responsible. I will take responsibility for others. I will consider their welfare above my own. Father, trust me. We're all gonna die unless you send Benjamin back with us. Send him with me." And of course he does that. And then would you, you remember in chapter 44, this is the climax, right? This is the most amazing thing that Judah says when he's standing in front of Joseph, right? He takes the blame of the whole situation and he puts it on his own shoulders. He says to Joseph, please, Let me remain instead of the boy as a servant. Let me be a slave and let the boy go back to his father with his brothers." Now just think for a second. This is the old heartless Judah who had no concern for his brother before, who had no concern for his father before. And now can you see, who does this look like? This man who offers himself as a substitute, let me be the slave, let me go to death as a slave in Egypt rather than my other. Can you see, hasn't he become transformed to be an image of his own great, great, great, great grandson, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the substitute and who provides that substitutionary atonement. Let him go free, let it come on me. Isn't this beautiful? Brothers and sisters, as we went through the time of Advent, we were considering how this child, Jesus, comes, as it were, from a genealogy that has so many skeletons in the closet. Judas and Tamars. But how strange and wonderful that God, even in the midst of this broken line, that it is precisely there that God elects to do His saving work, through the Rahabs, through the Bathshebas, through the Ruths, and through the Tamars, our mothers in the faith. God has beautiful and strange ways And He will fulfill His promises to bring about a Savior, a substitutionary Savior, a rescuer to do good to all of us, all of us who come from the four corners of the world. We who cannot save ourselves, we who cannot resist temptation, we who cannot make ourselves righteous on the inside, we might be able to do so on the outside, but God sends this Savior for us. Oh, friends, may God give to you the faith of Tamar, who value your connection with Christ and with His people higher than any other earthly connection. Oh, may you value your connection to the Christian Church. And if you're an outsider today, if you haven't been baptized, if you haven't joined the Christian Church, What an invitation. What an invitation to express your trust in Christ and to join this church or another gospel-centered church and to eat at this table to be assured that God's blessings are for you now and forever and ever. What a beautiful thing. May you have the faith of Tamar. And may God give you and me the repentance of Judah, that we might become renewed, that we might reflect our Savior more and more. We who have done terrible things, who are still subject to deep temptations and great inconsistencies and flaws of character. May God continue to work in each of us by His Spirit, by His Word, and through repentance. May He work a renewal in us. that we might be like Judah, who reflected the beauty of his own great-great-grandson, the one who gave himself for others to secure their comfort and was concerned more with others than for himself. You may remember, and I'll close with this, you may remember the end of Judah's father's life. Do you remember? What does he do? He calls his sons to them and he gives them each one a blessing. He makes a prophetic statement about each of his sons. And who gets the firstborn privileges generally? Of course, the firstborn. And here comes Reuben. What does he say about Reuben? Reuben, too unstable. You went up on your father's bed, committed incest. Not you. Here comes the second one, Levi. Simeon, third one. What does he say about them? Too violent. Too violent. taken the way of the sword. But then now, at the end of his life, who comes in front of his father? Judah. And what does Jacob say? Jacob says at the end of his life, he says, now, Judah, in Judah, now that is a king. In that one, and through that tribe, There will be a lion who will come through the tribe, through the line of this one Judah. A lion, a king will come who will indeed set us all free. Isn't that beautiful? Would you join me in prayer? Let's pray. Our Lord God, We're tempted to look at your word for some moral story, as some tale of giving us some moral example, teaching us how to live our lives. But we thank you, Lord, for these strange stories of the failures of the patriarchs. We thank you that the whole Bible is one story pointing us to our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that it was through the son of Judah that the lion would come, who is the king. We thank you for him, the Messiah, the king, who is also a lamb who was slain, who gave himself in a desperate act of faith, who gave himself over to death and rejection so that we might have life and acceptance. Even as we eat now at the table, we thank you for this Jesus, who went to the ultimate, not for himself, but for us. We thank you that we are safe and secure from all alarms and threats because of our Savior Jesus. Our Lord in heaven, we thank you that you take the weak to humble the strong, and we thank you for how you took Tamar and you humbled Judah. We pray that you'd make us like Tamar, Lord God, that you'd make us people of desperate faith that we would cling to Christ and that we would value our privileges of connection with your church, we do pray. We thank you for our mothers in the faith. We thank you for Esther. We thank you for Deborah. We thank you for Rahab and Jael. and for Ruth, and we ask that you give us faith that we might emulate them. Lord, have mercy on each of us. May your blessing be on us as we eat now of the heavenly table. Strengthen us and send us out into the world, Lord, and enable us, we do pray, that we might have something of that antithesis about us, that people would say, why are these people different? Why do they value different things? Why are they so strange in what they think is beautiful and true and good? Help us to reflect our Savior, we pray, and use us to win others by our deeds and our words toward faith in Him. Build up your church, we pray, and may your blessing be on our congregation here today. Watch over us and guard us and keep us, we pray, Lord, for Jesus' sake, amen.