Sins & Sons

Well, good morning. I’m Pastor Ben and it is my pleasure to share from God’s Word with you this morning as we continue on in Genesis part five, going to chapter by chapter, verse by verse and word by word, and we’re going to dig into, what we just heard, 38 so get excited. And by way of reminder, today is a PG 13 message because of some of the themes that are in here. There’s sexual perversion, there’s, there’s attempted murder. And then also next week it’ll be PG 13. The reason that we bring this, in front of you is to let you know, in case there are any kids here that are sixth grade and under that, you’d prefer as parents or those that have brought those kids if you’d rather have them in, SG kids or programing that’s running right now. You’re welcome to take them and register them for that, so they can go learn, at an age appropriate level. But they’re of course welcome here as well. Just want to make you aware of that. So today and then also next week it’ll be, PG 13. And as we continue on, do you want to remind you as well that we are in the middle of a 13 week challenge?

This is part five, 13 weeks to close out the entire book of Genesis. Now we’re here like we’re in this. We’ve been in this book for over two years, two and a half years. By the time we’re done with it, as we’ve taken some breaks along the way. But we want you to be in worship every week, to hear from God, to hear from His word. And then also, if before you even come in to actually engage with the text, to read the text, to let God start to till the soil of your heart, not only for you, but then for your family as well, that you might invest in your family throughout the week. And we have great resources for that. You can go online. You can also go to our app. We do have our reading plan, so you know just how much we’re covering each week. There’s also dig deeper questions where you and your spouse or you and a small group or friends can dig into, not only the text, but just to think about it a little bit deeper and then family questions as well.

And so, that’s what we want for you for these next 13 weeks to see what God might be doing in each of our hearts as we, commit to spending time not only here in worship. A time in his word says, sound good? Okay, so three people are on board. Anybody else? Yes. Okay. And those online, you’re invited into that as well. And so if you were with us last week, I want to remind you. And if you weren’t, let me get you caught up really quick. So we’ve been in the book of Genesis. We’ve been following some patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And now we’ve come to Joseph. And Joseph is going to be our primary character for the most part, for the remainder of our time in Genesis, with the exception of this week. And what we’ve seen in the life of Joseph is that he was the golden child. His dad’s favorite dad made him given a special robe. All the brothers hated him. They wanted to kill him, but rather than kill him, they sold him into slavery. And that’s where we actually pick up our character that we’re going to be hanging with for today.

We go back to last week. All the brothers of Joseph had gathered around. They said, let’s kill him. But Judah, being so righteous, stood up and said, well, what are we going to gain if we kill him? Brothers, let’s sell him. We’re going to get some money out of this. Like, let’s, let’s, let’s get a little something and then then we won’t kill him. And then also we can kind of line our pockets a little bit. And so Judah, the one who spoke up in this way to sell his brother, is the one we’re going to be following for this chapter. And I will say that as you’re reading through the book of Genesis, it seems like Genesis 38 just pops up out of nowhere because you’ve you’re now following Joseph. Joseph’s the guy. And then it just goes off in the left field. But we’re going to see that as you read God’s Word and you read it from chapter to chapter, that there’s a lot of threads that are running throughout this whole thing. And if you come next week, you’ll see that some of those threads from the story today are going to continue into next week as well.

And so this is what’s transpired. Joseph went up, he went to check and then he went to Dothan. Then he was captured by his brothers. He sold into slavery. And now he’s off on his way to Egypt. And instead of following Joseph into Egypt, which will be next week, we’re going to see Judah and what goes on with him. Well, Judah is his father’s morning. His father thinks that Joseph is dead. He’s presented with a robe that’s soaked in blood. So it’s dad’s morning, and while his dad’s there, weeping over the loss of his favorite son, Judah thinks, well, it’s a good time to leave. So here’s this guy that sells his brother into slavery, and then his dad’s mourning, and he goes, well, this is a time for me to just move on because it says at that time, Judah left his brothers and he went down and to live in a different area. And then we see this, that he sees a woman, a Canaanite woman. And if you’ve been with us in in Genesis at all, you’ve seen that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all have something in common other than that they’re sinners that God is using for his purposes. But they all have wives, that they went back to the East, that they went back to where Abraham originally was from.

So they can find a wife from their. And that God did not want them to be marrying among the Canaanites. Yet Judah leaves his family heads down and he marries a Canaanite woman. And we also see this as well. We don’t know her name whatsoever, but we do know her father’s name, which is Shua, which means wealthy. So Judah leaves with a little bit of money in his pocket from selling his brother, and he moves to a Canaanite land. He sees a pretty girl that’s the daughter of a wealthy guy, and he marries her. So Judah is looking good so far, isn’t he? To give you a snapshot of what you just heard to in that whole text, trying to make some sense of what’s going on there. So you have Judah and Judah’s wife. She doesn’t even get a name, but she’s shoe his son or shoe his daughter. And then they have sons together. They have her, they have Onan, and they have Shiloh. And not only did you to marry a Canaanite, but he finds a woman for his son to marry as well. And they do. And then you just get this, like, short little snapshot. All of a sudden they’re married. But her, his eldest born son is sinful, and we don’t know what that means.

And he dies.

Is anybody here this morning a sinner? Anybody? I’m so thankful we don’t live back then. Amen. If that’s all that we know. He’s sinful. God knew it was wicked. He strikes him down. And then all of a sudden, we see the spotlight being put on Onan. And then we’ll see Sheila and how they all playing. But what’s going to transpire and what you heard in that text, and we’re going to dig into in just a little bit, is that this is a dark, confusing chapter of Scripture. And when you see a chapter like this, it raises questions like, so what is this doing here? Why is this kind of interrupting the story of Joseph? What’s the whole point of this? Because the God’s killing people that are sinful, and then what we’re going to see in just a bit is that Judah sleeps with his daughter in law. You just heard of this should be no surprise there. What’s going on? What does God do with these things when I. What I want to invite you into before we move forward is to think about it this way, rather than as we continue forward moving into this text, thinking of it as like this microscope, let’s just zoom in on these people that lived thousands of years ago and let’s, let’s dissect their sins because they’re they’re but I’d rather us move forward and look at Genesis 38 as a mirror.

And look and see their sin, but see how it might reflect in ourselves as well. Because there’s deception, there’s lie, there’s sin, there’s perversion that goes on in this text. And it’s very easy for us to look at it from a distance. It’s much more difficult, but much more fruitful for us to look at it as a mirror. So before we jump back into the text, I want to ask you this question what is the worst type of lie? There’s different types of lies, right? There’s white lies that, you know, they’re they’re they’re not. Or you kind of leaving out a little bit of the truth. There’s lies that you just flat out know our lies before example just this last week, one of our boys, as he was finishing up dinner, he had a plan in mind. You see, after dinner, sometimes, not all the time. We’ll do a dessert. Something special. Right? Have I think this last week we were having some birthday cake and things. And so, you know. But to have that dessert, what do you need to do? You need to clean your you got to clean your plate. Right. Okay. So we’re not crazy parents. You know, kids eat your veggies, eat your food, and then you can have your dessert. Well, my wife was doing something. So was I helping one of the other kids or in the kitchen. And the next thing we know, all of a sudden, there on the table lies a clean plate.

So it’s time for dessert, right? Oh, yeah. Did you did you finish your veggies? Did you finish your broccoli. Okay. I guess it’s time to move forward. We’re moving on to dessert. And lo and behold before that desserts all prepped and ready to go. My wife goes over sees in the trash. It’s a pile of broccoli. Sitting on top. That’s the type of lye that is a type of sin I think we’re all too familiar with. We know full well exactly what we’re doing. I think there’s actually another type of lye, though, that doesn’t actually come to mind for us. And there’s a reason it doesn’t. It’s a type of lye where we actually fool ourselves. So it’s almost 20 years ago now that I played high school football, and I remember I don’t know why, but this memory is feared in my brain that I had a regular practice. Nothing special. We’re just doing regular conditioning drill drills where they give the ball to one of the faster players, tell him to run sprints down the sideline, and that everybody else, every other member on the team who’s lined up has to take an angle and they have to go touch the shoulder pad of the one running with the ball and run back. And that was one of our running drills just to practice getting a good angle. And I remember they gave it to one of the faster players and he’s running down the sideline. And there I am with all of my other teammates. And we’re all crowded around and we’re just trying to get to this one player. And I remember running there and I remember having to reach over a couple of my teammates and reaching and running back.

To a coach just. Who immediately called Marsh. Did you touch him? To this day? I don’t know, I, I thought I did. I could have swore I touched him, I every thing inside of he thought. No, surely, I mean, I got it, I got just a little bit of a fiber of his jersey. I had to have. The coach didn’t agree. So not only did Marsh, but the rest of the team had to do a little bit more conditioning that day. I believe that’s the worst kind of lie is is this self-deception is you actually don’t know what you don’t know. We all get we all get the broccoli in the trash, don’t we? We all understand when I know full well the sin that I’m committing. I know the lie that I’m telling. I know that I’m being deceptive. The worst type of deception, I believe, is self-deception. Because who’s going to save you from that? And what we’re going to see is that there’s some self-deception taking place here in this text here today. And so jumping back into the text to give you a sense of what’s going on here and to clear up some of the more confusing spots. So Earth passes away, the oldest brother. And then we see that Judah tells his middle son, you need to go and fulfill your duty. You need to go sleep with your brother’s wife. Which sounds, doesn’t it? Am I the only one? It’s not. It’s out of context for our culture. But if you go back to this culture, it wasn’t just God’s people, but within that whole society.

This was the duty of any brother who had a brother who passed away, that he would then fathered children for him. And it wasn’t only the father children, but it was to take care of the widow, because to be a widow within that culture, would you be on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder you needed children, and in particular you needed sons to care for you, especially in older age. So much so that we see later in God’s Word in the book of Deuteronomy, this becomes actually a law, the letter right marriage law, saying that if your brother dies and the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family, she’s not supposed to go marry someone else, but her husband’s brother shall go in and to her and take her as his wife and perform his duty. And the first son whom she will bear shall succeed the name of the dead brother, which is very key. You have to hang on to that, that when you go fulfill that duty, that when you do that, not only you caring for that woman, but you are carrying on your brother’s name. And this isn’t just in Deuteronomy. Actually, Pharisees reference this very text in the New Testament when talking to Jesus about marriage. It’s just an odd text is something called. It’s something that we no longer have to fulfill. But it was the duty of brothers back then. Onan knew this full well. Judah is trying to do the right thing here, and he sends his son, his second born son, to go do this. But Onan doesn’t live up to it. So the Onan knew the child would not be his.

He knew just for what we just read. It wasn’t going to be his child. It was going to be his older brother, or it was going to be his son and see this. So whenever you see that, whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, did this happen once? The text points to the fact that this is an ongoing thing. Whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spill the semen on the ground he kept from providing offspring for his brother. God saw this as a wicked thing and God put him to death. What is going on here? He sees this duty that his dad’s calling into, that he knows is the right thing to do, and he’s not fulfilling it. And he’s struck dead. And people will use this text and twist this text. Some think that this is a proof text that God is against any sort of contraception whatsoever. But you have to look deeper. What’s actually going on here? Because here, here in this perverse, dark, secret place where owning things, nobody knows what’s going on, God sees God not only sees the acts that are taking place, but he sees what’s in Owen’s heart and what’s in his mind. And the text tells us what’s in his mind. The child’s not going to be his. So what is Owen in sin? Well, first off, he is using his sister in law like a prostitute. He is using her for his own sexual gratification. Yet he’s not fulfilling his duty. But deeper than that, why isn’t he fulfilling his duty? The son would be her son.

Or was the oldest son the oldest son who received what? A double portion carry on the family name would be the patriarch of that part of the family. You see, as long as owning doesn’t give Tamar any more children, and in particular any more sons, he’s now the eldest. He now has a double portion. There is a greed within his heart, so he’s willing to just use his sister in law for his own purposes, while all the while maintaining his position as the eldest son now of Judah. God sees this in him and he kills. Which then leads us to now this is a messed up thing. Two sons are dead. Judah says to his daughter in law, you got to get out of here. You got to go live in your father’s household until until Sheila grows up, until his third born son grows up and somewhat understandably, like he’s looking at this and he goes, he thought that he might die, too, just like his brothers. I’ve already lost two sons. And the thing that they have in common is that they were with this woman. And so I need to send her away. Again, this is a cultural thing, and we don’t quite see this. But her is dead. Onan is dead. Tamar is Judah’s daughter at this point. Still. She has left her family. She left to enter into marriage to be part of Judas family.

Now it is Judah’s responsibility. It is his duty to care for her. And rather than care for her, rather than have her continue to live with him and he be the one that provide for her, he sends her away. He pushes her off. And he doesn’t quite see the depth of his own negligence, his own abdicating of his responsibility to Tamar. I think this is something that we can all relate to in one way or another, that there are things in our life that we would rather push off, that there are things at home or at work that when we see come across our desk, when we get a letter, when we see that there’s something that needs to be done, we look at it and we think to ourselves, you know, who would be really good at doing this? Future me. Future me will have energy and time, and they will pour the effort it takes in to do this task. That’s who will do this. I mean, is there anybody out there by the. Does anyone have a junk drawer at their house? I think that is the place of the proverbial future me future me will organize this stuff, answer these emails, sort through this mail. I mean, I just live this out not that long ago, so this ends up being a good example of that. I know that our great state of Michigan, they do a marvelous job of letting us know when it is time to register our vehicles, don’t they?

And I allow that to be one of those future me type things. And so it is a future me thing for a little bit too long. And there’s a Monday morning. Normally I get ready for for work. I’m heading here, so I can meet with Pastor Tim. And, we would like we do on every Monday morning. And, so I turn on 23 mile and I’m driving, and I’m in a quarter mile, down the road and all, I see that these marvelous lights in my rearview mirror. It’s so bright, so shiny. So I pull off. The officer just lets me know, that, you know, probably good to register my vehicle, seeing as it’s been six months overdue. No warning, no warning. That time future me didn’t get to it. Do we do this? Do you do this? Might not be with a car registration. It might be with something in your family, at your house where we push off. Well, God has placed before us the things that could be simple things. Or they could be challenging things. Things that we’re called to do within our relationships for our spouses, things we’re called to do for our children, things we’re called to do for our parents, things we’re called to do at work, and we just push them off.

And it’s not that big of a deal. Not realizing that all the while, as we do, that there’s a cost. And what we’re doing is we’re saving ourselves from the cost of effort and energy there in that moment. But what we often don’t see is what Tamar lived out. Judah wasn’t willing to pay the price to have to continue to house Tamar until his son got a little bit older, and he really is. We’re going to see he had no intention whatsoever of giving his third son to her, but Tamar, she’s the one who’s footing the bill. First husband. She was so excited. You can just imagine they’re married. They’re excited to start on their life together. And this guy, whatever it was, was so wicked that he, God strikes him dead. And then she grieves and as she mourns, and then all of a sudden, here comes someone, maybe this guy, he’s going to redeem this whole thing. And then in secret, in dark, in the hidden, intimate moments of their relationship, he just uses her and passes her off, and God strikes him dead. And now she’s just being pushed off again. And then as she goes to this house, it just needs to be understood, too. She is Judah’s daughter. She is basically betrothed to Sheila. She has no option to marry any other man.

She is now just called to go live in obscurity in her father’s house and wait. Judah pushing that off, abdicating responsibility. While it didn’t cost him in that moment, it certainly cost Tamar. Time passes. Judah’s wife also passes. The story moves on. And as you heard as it was read, there was time that he was going to go up to a certain city because it was time to shear the sheep. And and Tamar heard about this, and she wanted to scout things out and see what’s going on. She knew her father in law was going to be there, and as she scouts things out, she sees that third born son, the one who is supposed to marry her, the one who’s supposed to give her children. He’s old enough now, but I haven’t heard word from Judah. I haven’t heard word from my father in law that it’s time to marry Sheila. So she takes matters into her own hands, dresses like a prostitute, and sits there at the gate. But what’s so interesting here is that’s all she does. She sits there. She has this in her mind.

Something in mind. But Judah. He’s the one that goes and approaches her. He’s the one that propositions her. He is the one that initiates. We don’t know why. Other than the fact that he saw a prostitute and he wanted to sleep with her. And this gets to be one of the patriarchs that we follow, and they strike up a deal. And she asks, well, what is this the payment going to be? He says he’s going to send a young goat. He doesn’t have any young goats with him. And so we pick back up in the text in verse 18. Then he says, okay, I don’t have a I don’t have a goat. So I’ll just give you a pledge, a promise that I can give you a goat later. So what’s the pledge going to be? And she asks your seal, your court and your staff. They slept together and she becomes pregnant again. A different time, a different culture. The seal accord and the staff. This seal is his signature. This is a signet ring where you would sign official documents with you would actually press it into wax. This is basically like an auto stamp that you could stamp checks with or something.

This is Judah’s very name, an identity. The cord is a cord. Likely that he would have worn that seal around his neck with. And the staff represents his position in the family, his prominence and his power. He is willing to lay essentially his very identity at her feet and just to sleep with her. This would be, in essence, like going like he did and going to a prosecuting me. Like, you know what? I don’t have the money to pay you now, but I’m going to leave my credit cards with you and my ID and my Social Security and my birth certificate. I’ll just leave these here for now, and I’ll come back and pay you later. Do we say he’s laying these things at her feet because he’s also overcome with lust? And it’s going to cost him. But what about you? What is your sin cost you? Again, this isn’t a microscope to just pick on Judah. But this is supposed to be a mirror. So where do we see ourselves in this text? What it’s going to cost him? He’s willing to lay down his very identity at the feet of sin, to fulfill his own selfish lust. And again, it’s hard to look at ourselves because it’s so easy to look at, oh, look at the people in society. Like when their secret sin, when it finally comes to light, their addiction, their adultery, whatever it may be, that it can cost them their job, it can cost them their family.

And those can be big, huge sins if we want to start to categorize sins. But any sin that we continually live in, I believe it actually robs us of. Of something actually arguably more valuable. Robs you of comfort. Knowing that you have a God who loves you and forgives you because you choose, you actively choose to continually come to the altar of sin and continually bowed down to that sin, trusting it, saying, this is the thing that’s going to give me affection. This is the thing that’s going to give me hope. This is the thing that’s going to give me love. I’m going to give this my self over to this thing. And in doing so, we no longer are able to be comforted. Because we’re not willing to confess, because we’re still willing to live into it. And then we’re actually not free anymore either. We actually don’t have freedom anymore, because what Scripture tells us is that we live in sin. You are a slave to sin, that you are bound to that sin. And we think, oh well, we’re we’re free. We have free will. We can do whatever we want that’s wrong. That’s actually not what Scripture says, that if you live in sin, secret, dark, hidden sin, that you are a slave. You are slave to your own sinful nature. You are slave to the bidding of the devil himself. That’s what sin cost us, especially sin that we are aware of, that we don’t address. And then, even worse yet, sin that is alive and well in our life and the light has not yet shone on it, that we don’t even see the depth of our own self.

Because of this text, again, it’d be so very easy to go. Well, he slept with a prostitute and he ended up sleeping with his own daughter. That’s not me. I’m not an adulterer. But here again, that is not the primary sin. Just like owning primary sin wasn’t just a sexual thing. Judas is not just a sexual thing. It’s idol worship. And what we see in this text as we look at it, is that we ourselves are all idolaters. And as we are all idolaters, we are all adulterers. The way the Scripture talks about Christ continually is that he is a bridegroom, that he is the groom, and that the church us here, the church, we are his bride, and that he is coming for us, that he has come for us. Yet we are not some perfect and pure bride, but we are a bride that gets so entangled and ensnared with sin again and again. Sin that sometimes we’re not aware of. But all too often we are fully aware of what we are doing. One theologian put it this way, is that the human heart is the perpetual forge of idolatry.

It is a factory, and the thing that that factory produces over and over and over again is idols. Idols that we bow down to, that we can trust in, idols that we can bow down, that we can worship. And if you don’t believe me, look at it through this lens. It’s not that you’re like carving out some image and you’re setting it up in your house, but what about these things? We’re not just materialism. How much time do we spend as individuals, and how much time do we spend as a society worshiping money, worshiping possessions, worshiping position and success that we just want a little bit more than other people so we can feel good about ourselves and that we can be self deceptive and tell ourselves what the reason that I need to push so hard and I need to work so hard, is I need to provide for all of you. Do you need we need these clothes. We need these cars. We need these vacations. All the while, all we’re doing is deceiving ourselves. And what we’re doing is we’re trusting in those things more than we’re trusting in God or relationships. Here’s a good thing. God has given us to be in relationship and community with each other. But when we prioritize the wrong way and we invert things and we value even our spouses and our children and our family above our time with God, above our worship of God, and we worship them more than we worship him, they have become idols in our life. We are willing to spend thousands of dollars to chase down a travel sports team here and there. But you know what? It’s it’s really difficult to make it to church on Sunday.

What about pleasure? All our society loves pleasure that we can just become so numbed with content and social media that we prioritize, you know, like how like. And this all fits together, doesn’t it? Because I’m working so hard to obtain all these things that I don’t really want to impress people I don’t really like? Well, I need a rest. I need to entertain myself. And then I actually can get addicted to this pleasure. And since we’re looking at this text, that that pleasure can be alcohol, it can be drugs, it can be gambling where we can just numb ourselves because we don’t want to actually deal with the sin in our life. And it can be sexual as well. Just this last week, just this, like two days ago, an email hit my inbox. And it’s for pastors and and the stat on their. 92. 92% of adults within our country surveyed said that within the last month that they viewed pornography, 92%. In The secret, in the Hidden. Nobody needs to know about it, right? It doesn’t cost anybody else anything. But not only you sitting it against yourself, you’re sitting against your loved ones, your spouse. You’re sitting against your God in the pursuit of trusting that this is the thing that you need. This is the thing that’s going to give you fulfillment. It’s idolatry. And if that’s the case, if there’s someone here under the sound of my voice that is partaking in these types of sins, that is living in adultery, that’s living in the idolatry of possessions, that is perpetually trapped by pornography. Hear this from your pastor. Stop. You have become a slave to sin.

God does not want you to be there. It can also be this. It can be self-reliance. Your personal goals. You build yourself up as your own God. God’s word just levels the playing field, doesn’t it? It’s not just Judah back 4000 years ago. Wow, that guy was really messed up. But we ourselves. Because the condition of our sinful hearts, the hearts that we have that now been tainted by original sin, the sin that we inherited from Adam and Eve, that we do have this problem. That we are always seeking some idol, something to fulfill us rather than God. What we see happen next is just astounding. You see, three months later, Tamar is brought forth. She’s seen as being pregnant, and Judah’s response bring her out and have her burned to death. The one he was supposed to be caring for. The one that he should have supplied his third son for, for her who is now of age, he hears that she’s been sexually immoral and he is just so appalled. Who? Who? Judah. Who could sleep with a prostitute, a prostitute? My goodness. We must burn her. But again, it’s not just Judah. Let me ask you this. How does your sin look on other people? How did the sins that you think, the desires that you have that are contrary to God’s will, the actions, the words that you share, how do they sound coming out of the mouth of someone else?

It’s one thing just to gossip, but when someone gasps, it’s about you and you hear about it, Burnham okay, it’s one thing to be unforgiving when you don’t really know what happened. I still have anger and resentment, but when someone doesn’t forgive you, when you seek it, Burnham. There is one thing that Judah does get right here, though we’ve seen it already. Earth is dead. He was a sinner, Owen. Instead he was a sinner. Tamar is caught in sin. What’s the cost of sin? That death. And that’s not just Judah, that’s God’s word. What are the wages? What is earned? What is the wage? What’s the actual paycheck that comes from sin? It’s death. That’s what it cost you. And so she moves forward in this and she’s being brought out. She sends a message and she says, I’m pregnant by the man who owns these. And she added, see if you recognize the seal, the cord and the staff. There’s something very curious that’s taking place here. She’s being brought out. She knows Judas, the father. She has the evidence, and then she’s being brought out to be burned to death, which is just a terrible way to die. She doesn’t point the finger at him and says, you’re the father. You’re the sinner. No, she presents the evidence before him. She brings light to this dark corner of Judah’s life.

And she actually puts it within his hands whether she’s going to live or die. Because here, in this moment, Judah could remain silent. Could you see it? Could you see how he could just continually push it down? No deceiving himself. Nope. I don’t know these. I don’t recognize these so that she could die. But rather he’s cut to the heart. And this. This is an awful, messed up situation, isn’t it? But I thank God that scripture is filled with awful, messed up situations, because this is the life that we now live in again, it might not be this very sin, but this is the battle that we all fight. In this what Scripture tells us, Paul writes in Romans chapter seven that the good that he wants to do, he doesn’t do it, and the wicked things that he doesn’t want to do. Those are the very things that he continues to do. This is Paul the Apostle writing the majority of the New Testament, and he’s saying, I still struggle with sin. There is a war that is waging inside of me. And he calls out, in that moment he goes, who? Who is going to save me from this body of sin and death? He is calling out to God because he’s essentially asking, what has the sin cost me? It’s cost me my relationship with God. It’s separating me from him. And what it has cost God. Is what Judah wasn’t willing to give up. Judah wasn’t willing to give up. His third son. God was willing to give up his only son. Not for the righteous, but for the unrighteous. God. Not for the pure, but for the sinners. You and I. And so it follows after Paul makes that exclamation, that question, whether he’s down to the end of himself and he’s going, who is going to save me from this body of sin and death? And he goes on, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus, because that is the only place when you finally come to this place, when you see, when you long, long look into that mirror and you see not the sin of other people around you, but the sin that you yourself carry, not just the ones that everyone knows about, the ones that no

one knows about, the corners of your life that you dare not utter, say aloud that he’s died. For those those awful, terrible situations. In Galatians three it says this Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming Christ became an awful, horrible situation. He became a curse. It’s because it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole. That now the thing that we use to signify being a Christian, do you understand? It is is a device of torture. It is an awful, ugly thing. Just like this chapter of Scripture is an awful, ugly, horrible thing. But now when we look to that cross, when we see him up there on that tree, what we see is not only our Savior nailed there, but with him. Nailed to that tree is every single sin of yours, every single dark corner of your life, every single thought, desire indeed of your heart that you dare not utter to the person beside you was nailed to a tree 2000 years ago so that you you could have confidence, you could have assurance, you could have freedom, that you are no longer a slave to sin because who the son has set free is free indeed. And this invitation then comes. This is done. It is finished. Because out of this ugly, horrible chapter, the thing that comes out are two twins. The eldest is not only the great great grandfather of David, but the great great great great great great great great grandfather of Jesus himself. And now Judah, faced with this evidence, he leans in. He doesn’t push it off. He doesn’t hide it. He doesn’t deceive himself. But he does what God calls all of us to do and what he’s calling you to do here in these moments, as he confesses she is more righteous than I. Faced with his sin, he admits. And unlike her, and unlike in due to lifts, that an invitation still stands for us here today to no longer be chained to your sin, to no longer push it down.

Because what we read out of the book first John in chapter one, it says this if we claim we have no sin, I don’t believe that’s anybody here this morning. We recognize it, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he, Jesus is faithful. He is just, and he will forgive us of all of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. The invitation stands the only way that we can approach him and confess our sins is because we have confidence. We have faith in the one who we’re confessing to. It’s not the act of confession to that gets you forgiveness of sins. It’s the act of confession and faith that your sins are, in fact, actually already forgiven.